3D scene file formats

Formats that carry a whole scene from one program to another: meshes arranged in a hierarchy, with materials, textures, cameras, lights, skeletons and animation.

Formats

.ABC

Alembic geometry cache

Baked animated geometry for film pipelines: every point on every frame.

.DAE

COLLADA digital asset

Khronos’ XML exchange format for 3D scenes, grouped into libraries.

.FBX

ASCII FBX

The text form of FBX: the same scene nodes written as names, values and braces.

.FBX

Binary FBX

Autodesk’s scene exchange format as binary node records, the usual form of FBX.

.GLTF

GL Transmission Format

Khronos’ open format for 3D scenes, as JSON with buffers or as one binary .glb.

.USD

Universal Scene Description

Pixar’s layered scene description, as text, binary Crate or a USDZ package.

.WRL

VRML world

The first web 3D standard: a text tree of nodes, still used to export coloured meshes.

.X3D

Extensible 3D

The ISO standard for interactive 3D scenes, the successor to VRML.