As the 3D commerce industry evolves, artists and brands alike need clear, up-to-date guidance to efficiently produce optimized assets. Today, we're excited to announce the launch of version 2.0 of the Asset Creation Guidelines—a comprehensive and continuously updated resource designed to help 3D artists create photorealistic, commerce-ready assets for web, XR, games, and other real-time 3D applications. Like the original Real-Time Asset Creation Guidelines, these best practices use glTF as a de facto target format, and can be applied to any 3D content creation workflow. 

The new Asset Creation Guidelines are designed to help artists ranging from beginners to experts develop 3D cross-platform content for real-time rendering. If you’ve ever wondered how to create a photorealistic 3D model, how to animate a model to show how it works in addition to how it looks, or how to compress a 3D model for faster download, this resource is for you.

Why Guidelines 2.0?

The original Real-Time Asset Creation Guidelines, introduced by the Khronos Group's 3D Commerce Working Group in 2020, outlined best practices for high-quality, real-time rendering for glTF and other platforms. Since that first release, the landscape of 3D asset creation has advanced dramatically, fueled by rapid technological developments, enhanced software capabilities, and expanding use cases in retail, eCommerce, and XR experiences.

Recognizing this shift, the Khronos Group's 3D Formats Asset Creation Guideline Task Sub Group has reimagined these guidelines as a living document—one that continuously integrates industry feedback, tooling advancements, and updates to critical standards. Asset Creation Guideline 2.0 is an authoring tool-agnostic resource that can be applied to any 3D asset creation software, both now and in the future.

What’s New in 2.0?

The new guidelines represent a significant leap forward in guidance depth and practicality. Here are key highlights from this substantial update:

File Formats and Structure:

• Clear guidance on how to distribute a model as an actionable 3D file with accompanying textures and geometry.
• Tips for logical and consistent asset naming.
• Guidance for ensuring file format interoperability between OpenUSD for authoring/interchange and glTF for transmission..

Geometry and Mesh Optimization:

• Updated, standardized guidelines for coordinate systems, scale, units, and origin locations, ensuring models appear correctly oriented and scaled consistently across platforms and improving AR realism and user experience.
• Best practices for creating GPU-friendly assets, such as using triangles over quads or ngons.
• Detailed guidelines on mesh instancing for repeated elements significantly improving performance.
• Recommendations for mesh compression using techniques such as Draco and MeshOpt, helping artists deliver visually stunning assets without compromising performance.

UV and Texture Guidance:

• Comprehensive advice on managing UV maps for compatibility across glTF and USDZ.
• Strategies to avoid visual artifacts through careful UV island spacing, texel density considerations, and effective use of atlased versus tiled textures.
• Tips on avoiding bleed from the automatic texture scaling known as MIP Mapping.

Animation Best Practices:

• Expanded content on efficient animation techniques, from keyframing strategies to advanced bone, skinning, and morphing methods.
• Tips on handling animation and ambient occlusion interactions are critical for maintaining visual consistency during animations.
• Guidance on the use of scaling to animate effects like growth, shrinkage, or pulsation, how uniform scaling prevents distortion, and the importance of correctly setting pivot points.

Materials and PBR:

• Deep dive into Physically Based Rendering (PBR) workflows.
• Introduction and explanation of "PBR Next" extensions—anisotropy, clearcoat, iridescence, and more—empowering artists to achieve unprecedented levels of realism.
• Clear guidance on material separation, transparency handling, and channel packing to enhance rendering performance.

Performance and Web Optimization:

• Actionable recommendations for optimizing 3D assets for web delivery and XR experiences, balancing visual fidelity with fast load times and smooth interactivity.
• Suggested practices for asset inspection using tools such as Khronos's glTF Compressor, glTF Asset Auditor, and glTF Validator, providing immediate insights into asset performance and quality.

A Living Resource—Built for the Community

The new guidelines are designed to evolve continuously, incorporating real-world feedback and adapting to technological innovations. This resource aims to serve as a dynamic foundation for best practices across the industry, ensuring that 3D artists and developers have access to the latest, most effective methods for creating optimized, high-quality assets.

Get Involved

We invite all artists, developers, and brands invested in 3D asset creation to explore these updated guidelines. Your experiences and insights are crucial for refining this resource, ensuring that it remains relevant and practical. Join the conversation on our Github repository,  the Khronos Support Forum, Stack Overflow, BlueSky or Mastadon to contribute your feedback or inquire about collaborative editing opportunities.

Asset Creation Guidelines 2.0 is more than a document—it’s an invitation to build the future of 3D commerce together.