Earlier this year at its annual Worldwide Developers Conference, Apple unveiled some of the upcoming features in iOS 12 including a new 3D file format for Apple’s investment in Augmented Reality called USDZ (Universal Scene Description).
The file format was co-created by Pixar, and is a “zero-compression unencrypted zip archive” (hence the Z) of the powerful Universal Scene Description format used in their feature film pipeline. The format permits the transmission of 3D files back and forth in a performant manner making it ideal for mobile devices and a friendly format for app developers working with ARKit.
Happy to be featured by @Apple at #WWDC18 yesterday! “We want all kinds of creatives to be able to create content for AR. So we are working with the leading companies for 3D tools and 3D libraries” pic.twitter.com/SXAAZGNquu
— Sketchfab (@Sketchfab) June 5, 2018
As one of Apple’s launch partners on USDZ, and to celebrate the launch of iOS 12 we wanted to share some of our early experiments with converting Sketchfab models to USDZ to render natively in AR on iOS.
If you’re an Apple iPhone user who’s updated to the iOS 12 Beta we invite you to check out some of our preview models below by clicking on the buttons in a browser on your phone:
Stay tuned for more news on our support for USDZ in the near future.
About the author
Paul Chambers
Artist Evangelist & Community outreach at Sketchfab, freelance CG Generalist, render-farm tinkerer. Zelda worshipper.
