Overview
ISO/IEC 12113:2022 formalizes the Khronos glTF 2.0 specification as an international standard for a runtime 3D asset delivery format. The document, often cited as the glTF Specification, describes an API‑neutral, efficient, extensible and interoperable format for transmitting and loading 3D content. It covers both the JSON-based scene description and the binary GLB container layout, plus rules for versioning, media types, and extensions.
Key Topics
- File structure and encoding: JSON encoding for structured content and a binary GLB layout with header and chunk semantics.
- Binary data storage: Buffers, bufferViews and binary layout for vertex and index data.
- Accessors: typed access to array data, including sparse accessors and alignment/bounds requirements.
- Geometry and skinning: meshes, primitives, morph targets, skins and joint hierarchies for character animation.
- Textures and images: texture objects, image sources, and samplers (filtering, wrapping, NPOT considerations).
- Materials: physically based rendering (PBR) support via the metallic‑roughness material model and additional texture workflows.
- Scenes, nodes and transforms: hierarchical scene graph, node transforms and instantiation rules.
- Cameras and animations: view/projection conventions and animation channels/keyframe structures.
- Extensions and interoperability: mechanisms to declare and implement extensions in a standardized way.
- Normative references, URIs and media type registration: practical requirements for interoperability and deployment.
Applications
ISO/IEC 12113:2022 (glTF 2.0) is targeted at any workflow needing efficient runtime 3D asset exchange and fast load times:
- Web and mobile 3D viewers and engines
- AR/VR applications and runtimes
- Game engines and runtime asset pipelines
- 3D e‑commerce, digital twins and visualization tools
- Content creation and export tools that produce interoperable 3D assets
Adopting this standard improves cross‑platform compatibility, reduces asset load time, and streamlines pipelines between 3D authoring tools and rendering runtimes.
Who should use it
- 3D developers and engine authors
- Tool vendors and content creators
- DevOps and content pipeline integrators
- Standards and interoperability engineers
Related standards
- Prepared by Khronos and adopted under ISO/IEC JTC 1 procedures; the standard references media type registrations, normative external specifications and ISO/IEC directives for development and maintenance.
Keywords: ISO/IEC 12113:2022, glTF 2.0, runtime 3D asset delivery format, GLB, JSON encoding, PBR metallic‑roughness, buffers, accessors, 3D interoperability.
