All about Apple’s new USDZ File Format — Simplified
Apple at the WWDC Conference 2018, announced that it has developed a new file format, working together with Pixar, called USDZ Universal. This file will allow developers to create 3d models for augmented reality.
Why the new file format?
USD — Universal Scene Description, was developed by Pixar. The file has the ability to create a 3D scene by composing many sources files together into successively larger aggregations. This is great but this can be a problem using USD to deliver assets in the form that they have been built up. There is a no mechanism for representing images/textures as scene descriptions encodable in USD files. Also these assets can be delivered on a variety of systems and platforms if it is a single object, can be streamed and usable without unpacking to a filesystem.
Consider any Digital Asset Management (DAM) system, even though they are sophisticated to allow to host, manage and render assets, the assets need to be a single object. Overlays and layers maybe available on some systems (Like on Adobe experience manage by using Dynamic Media we can achieve text overlays). For 3d models, generally they are a combination of several objects (images and text).
