glTF 2.0 spec is now available

Hi all,

Today at the Web3D conference, we announced the finalized version of glTF 2.0.

This was over a year-long effort that first started as a “bug fix” 1.0.1 spec update at the Cesium code sprint last summer, but it then grew into a major update that introduces Physically Based Rendering (PBR) materials and removes the dependency on WebGL.

As part of Khronos, we’ve worked closely with Microsoft, and I’m pleased to say they have been contributing to a ton of open-source glTF projects and putting glTF front and center in the Microsoft ecosystem.

For Cesium, glTF 2.0 means:

  • In one of the next few releases, Cesium will support glTF 2.0 with the visual quality improvements that come from PBR. Cesium will continue to support glTF 1.0 for a very long time.
  • 3D Tiles will be updated to normatively reference glTF 2.0. glTF 1.0 will work, but please update your exporters and converters.
  • In a few months, the online model converter will only output glTF 2.0. So make sure you are using the latest version of Cesium when converting new models. Otherwise, you could use a older build of COLLADA2GLTF.

Finally, some of the major next steps in glTF are:

Thanks,

Patrick