Khronos Brings New Physically Based Rendering Materials Support To glTF

The Khronos Group's glTF specification that is a transmission format for 3D scenes and models continues picking up more impressive capabilities as its adoption by a growing range of software packages continue.

With companies from Microsoft to Autodesk supporting glTF in various capacities for 3D models, the demands on this format continue to increase. Today the glTF working group at Khronos is introducing a set of new physically based rendering (PBR) extensions to offer new capabilities for glTF.

The new PBR rendering extensions are for clear coat, transmission, and sheen with KHR_materials_clearcoat, KHR_materials_transmission, and KHR_materials_sheen, respectively. As implied by the names, these extensions allow for adding extra shine/polish to a layer, the transmission extension for modeling light passing through a material, and for sheen roughness and sheen color channels for simulating the effect light has on cloth.

The Khronos Group also notes that further extensions are coming too for further enhancing the physically-based material model support.

More details on these new materials extensions for glTF along with a nifty demo can be found via Khronos.org.