The Khronos Group consortium of graphics and compute interoperability standards, has announced the release of its 3D Commerce Viewer Certification Program to ensure online 3D viewers accurately and consistently display 3D products.
Amazon, Babylon.js, CGTrader, Emersya, Epic Games (Unreal Engine), Facebook (Spark AR), Google (<model-viewer> & Scene Viewer), Samsung (Internet Browser on Android), SketchFab, Unity, and UX3D (Gestaltor) have begun the process of certifying their viewers under this new program.
This should clear the way for reliable 3D and AR-powered shopping across multiple platforms and devices, which in turn will impact the amount of rendered content required, needing more output from designers and workflows for companies.
The issue with existing viewers is that there was no guarantee that they would appear consistently on different platforms, with each varying viewer capable of having a major impact on what the consumer sees.
Even with identical viewer settings, a chair might have looked very different in an ecommerce product listing versus a digital ad using a different viewer.
The Khronos Group’s diverse membership includes in-house content creators at major brands like IKEA, Amazon and Wayfair; 3D ecosystem and platform developers like Google, Microsoft, Adobe, Facebook, Samsung and Autodesk; and hardware manufacturers like Sony, Intel, NVIDIA, and AMD.
All recognise that the solution is to promote not one particular viewer, but to enable consistent performance across all of them. “When artists spend time perfecting a model for use in one viewer, it is both frustrating and inefficient to have to go back and edit it to display properly in every different viewer. In order for us to create an ecosystem of shared assets, artists need a common target,” said Ashleigh Miller, 3D program manager for Amazon and co-chair for Khronos Group’s Viewer Certification.
“Developers need to be free to choose the right viewer for their application, but artists should also have an expectation that their work is going to look as it’s supposed to.”
“The moment an asset leaves the boundaries of a controlled first-party ecosystem –say from a View-In-Room experience on a known OS on a known set of devices, to running in a 3D product ad on an unfamiliar OS on an unfamiliar device –you have had little control over how it looks,” said Shrenik Sadalgi, 3D Commerce Working Group chair and director of R&D / Wayfair Next at Wayfair.
“3D virtual products are beginning to accompany every product listing, together with the traditional 2D images. It’s imperative that we give content creators an assurance of viewing accuracy inside the 3D Commerce certified ecosystem, and enable consumers to experience a product in a consistent manner.
“With the 3D Commerce Viewer Certification Program, we’re one step closer to expanding the ubiquity of 3D virtual products and helping make 3D more pervasive as a medium.”
In order to become certified, vendors will have to demonstrate that a 3D asset will look the same in their viewer versus another certified viewer using a publicly available test package containing glTF assets to generate test images.
The Khronos 3D Commerce Working Group reviews these images, using the Khronos glTF Sample Viewer as a baseline.
The Khronos 3D Commerce Viewer Certification Program is open to any organisation wishing to certify that their viewers are capable of accurately displaying 3D assets used in e-commerce.
The process will involve signing a Certification Agreement and paying an annual fee – $1,500 for Khronos members, $2,500 for non-members – to make an unlimited number of submissions.
Successfully reviewed submissions and viewers will be added to a public Certification Registry.
Certified viewers will be able to badge themselves with the 3D Commerce Certified trademark in, with The Khronos Group calling on viewer and tool vendors across the 3D ecosystem to join the growing list of organisations in the pipeline to be certified.
