Universal 3D (U3D) is a compressed

file format A file format is a standard way that information is encoded for storage in a computer file. It specifies how bits are used to encode information in a digital storage medium. File formats may be either proprietary or free. Some file format ...

standard for

3D computer graphics 3D computer graphics, or “3D graphics,” sometimes called CGI, 3D-CGI or three-dimensional computer graphics are graphics that use a three-dimensional representation of geometric data (often Cartesian) that is stored in the computer for th ...

data. The format was defined by a special consortium called ''3D Industry Forum'' that brought together a diverse group of companies and organizations, including

Intel Intel Corporation is an American multinational corporation and technology company headquartered in Santa Clara, California. It is the world's largest semiconductor chip manufacturer by revenue, and is one of the developers of the x86 ser ...

Boeing The Boeing Company () is an American multinational corporation that designs, manufactures, and sells airplanes, rotorcraft, rockets, satellites, telecommunications equipment, and missiles worldwide. The company also provides leasing and ...

, HP,

Adobe Systems Adobe Inc. ( ), originally called Adobe Systems Incorporated, is an American multinational computer software company incorporated in Delaware and headquartered in San Jose, California. It has historically specialized in software for the cre ...

Bentley Systems Bentley Systems, Incorporated is an American-based software development company that develops, manufactures, licenses, sells and supports computer software and services for the design, construction, and operation of infrastructure. The compan ...

, Right Hemisphere and others whose main focus had been the promotional development of 3D graphics for use in various industries, specifically at this time manufacturing as well as construction and industrial plant design. The format was later standardized by Ecma International in August 2005 as ECMA-363. The goal is a universal standard for three-dimensional data of all kinds, to facilitate data exchange. The consortium promoted also the development of an

open source Open source is source code that is made freely available for possible modification and redistribution. Products include permission to use the source code, design documents, or content of the product. The open-source model is a decentralized so ...

library for facilitating the adoption of the format. The format is natively supported by the

PDF Portable Document Format (PDF), standardized as ISO 32000, is a file format developed by Adobe in 1992 to present documents, including text formatting and images, in a manner independent of application software, hardware, and operating systems. ...

format and 3D objects in U3D format can be inserted into PDF documents and interactively visualized by Acrobat Reader (since version 7).

Editions

There are four editions to date. The first edition is supported by many/all of the various applications mentioned below. It is capable of storing vertex based geometry, color, textures, lighting, bones, and transform based animation. The second and third editions correct some errata in the first edition, and the third edition also adds the concept of vendor specified blocks. One such block widely deployed is the RHAdobeMesh block, which provides a more compressed alternative to the mesh blocks defined in the first edition. Deep Exploration, Tetra4D for Acrobat Pro and PDF3D-SDK can author this data, and Adobe Acrobat and Reader 8.1 can read this data. The fourth edition provides definitions for higher order primitives (curved surfaces).

Application support

Applications which support PDFs with embedded U3D objects include: *

Adobe Acrobat Adobe Acrobat is a family of application software and Web services developed by Adobe Inc. to view, create, manipulate, print and manage Portable Document Format (PDF) files. The family comprises Acrobat Reader (formerly Reader), Acrobat (forme ...

Pro allows PDF creation and conversion of various file formats to U3D within the PDF. Acrobat Pro allows PDF creation and embedding of pre-created U3D files. *

Adobe Photoshop Adobe Photoshop is a raster graphics editor developed and published by Adobe Inc. for Windows and macOS. It was originally created in 1988 by Thomas and John Knoll. Since then, the software has become the industry standard not only in rast ...

CS3, CS4 and CS5 Extended are able to export a 3D Layer as a U3D file. * ArchiCAD allows export of U3D files. * Bluebeam Revu Allows PDF creation and embedding of U3D within the PDF. Comes packaged with plugins that can export 3D PDFs from Revit and Solidworks. *

Daz Studio Daz Studio is a free media design software developed by Daz 3D. Daz Studio is a 3D scene creation and rendering application used to produce images as well as video. Renders can be done by leveraging either the 3Delight render engine, or the Ira ...

Allows export to U3D. *

iText iText is a library for creating and manipulating PDF files in Java and.NET. iText was written by Bruno Lowagie. The source code was initially distributed as open source under the Mozilla Public License or the GNU Library General Public Licen ...

open source Java library allows creation of PDF containing U3D * Jreality, an open source mathematical visualization package with 3D-PDF and U3D export *

MeVisLab MeVisLab is a cross-platform application framework for medical image processing and scientific visualization. It includes advanced algorithms for image registration, segmentation, and quantitative morphological and functional image analysis. An ...

supports export of U3D models for biomedical images. *

MicroStation MicroStation is a CAD software platform for two- and three-dimensional design and drafting, developed and sold by Bentley Systems and used in the architectural and engineering industries. It generates 2D/3D vector graphics objects and elements an ...

allows export of PDF containing U3D. * Poser 7 * Autodesk Inventor allows saving of files to 3D PDF containing U3D. Soon available since version 2017. * KeyCreator allows reading of U3D data from U3D and PDF files and exporting models to U3D and embedding in 3D PDF. *

SolidWorks SolidWorks is a solid modeling computer-aided design (CAD) and computer-aided engineering (CAE) application published by Dassault Systèmes. According to the publisher, over two million engineers and designers at more than 165,000 companies w ...

allows saving of files to 3D PDF containing U3D up to release 2014. * ArtiosCAD allows saving of files to 3D PDF containing U3D. * SpaceClaim allows the opening and saving of 3D PDF format comprising U3D.

References

External links

*
Universal 3D Sample Software
formerly at www.3dif.org * a
Institute of Science and Technology (ISTI CNR)

Tutorial on embedding a U3D file into a PDF with Meshlab and Miktex
{{Vector graphics markup languages, state=uncollapsed 3D graphics file formats Ecma standards

Editions

Application support

See also

References

External links