.WRL File Format

Introduction

VRML, the Virtual Reality Modeling Language, was the first standard for 3D scenes on the web. Version 1.0 appeared in 1995, based on the file format of SGI’s Open Inventor. VRML 2.0 followed in 1996 with animation, sound and scripting, and became the ISO standard VRML97. Files are called worlds and use the extension .wrl; gzip-compressed worlds often use .wrz.

Browser plugins for VRML have long gone, and its successor is X3D. VRML is still written by CAD, scientific and 3D printing software as a simple way to export coloured meshes.

Structure

A VRML file is text. The first line names the version and character set: #VRML V2.0 utf8 for VRML97, or #VRML V1.0 ascii for the older version, whose syntax differs. The rest is a tree of nodes, each a type name followed by its fields in braces. Common nodes are Transform, Shape, Appearance, Material and IndexedFaceSet, whose coordIndex lists each face’s vertices and ends it with -1.

#VRML V2.0 utf8
Shape {
  appearance Appearance { material Material { diffuseColor 0 0.5 1 } }
  geometry IndexedFaceSet {
    coord Coordinate { point [ 0 0 0, 1 0 0, 0 1 0 ] }
    coordIndex [ 0, 1, 2, -1 ]
  }
}

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