Open 3D graphics standard backed by Sony, Intel, Nvidia gains kinematics

By Scott M. Fulton, III, BetaNews

August 6, 2008, 5:00 PM

You might prefer for the game console of your choice to be distinct or superior in some well-defined way. But as a developer, you might prefer to develop toward a more open, portable standard, such as the one being advanced this week.

In advance of a major demonstration at a graphics industry convention in Los Angeles next week, the Khronos Group coalition of graphics developers announced they will be demonstrating an improved open standard for representing 3D graphics assets that adds the ability for objects to have movable skeletons with skin and other objects attached.

The concept is called kinematics, and it's nothing new to graphical computing. Essentially, it's the idea that an object may be comprised of moving parts that are virtually connected to one another, and moving with respect to one another. A much more realistic person or creature can be simulated using this methodology. But until recently, it hasn't been possible to create such moving, animated objects in a way that's portable between gaming consoles, PC platforms, and handhelds.

That changes today, with the advent of version 1.5 of the Collada standard. Collada is developed by the same Khronos Group that's now in charge of the OpenGL rendering framework. Its primary backer is Sony, although Nvidia vice president Neil Trevett also serves as Khronos' president. This week's developments, however, show evidence of greater contributions from Khronos members Intel, Adobe, and Google.

Years ago, 3D worlds were simulated using patterns of interlinked triangles and rectangles, presenting designers with the challenge of devising new virtual realms around surfaces rather than structures. Kinematics enables designers to work more like sculptors and animators, by presenting them with tools that help them define what things in a virtual world are made of, how they move, and where they're going with respect to their environment.

According to the version Collada v1.5 release notes (PDF available here), an XML-based framework is provided for representing kinematic scenes, made up of instantiations of mechanically represented objects. Imagine a "bird" as though it were a class, and then imagine a flock of such birds as members of this class, with different permutations -- what Collada calls an articulated system. Then picture a scene where the flock flies in formation. You now have a basic picture of a three-tier classification scheme, where the latter element is the scene.

Another addition to the 1.5 specification is a new way to represent boundaries for geometric objects, such as cones, cylinders, toruses (or rather, tori), and complex curved surfaces.

Again, it's not so much that these features weren't available to game developers before -- they actually have been, for some time. But developers who want to build for multiple platforms need a way to transport their game assets between platforms; and in a perfect world, it would be nicer if they could use a more platform-neutral development environment to begin with, and then build for specific platforms separately late in their projects.

This will be the goal of tools such as Google SketchUp, Nvidia FX Composer, Autodesk 3DS Max, AMD RenderMonkey, and Adobe Photoshop CS3 Extended, which are among the Khronos members' products that the group said today will be expanded to support Collada version 1.5.