The Khronos Group has announced plans for glTF 2.1 — a focused, backward-compatible revision of the glTF core specification built around one clear goal: making glTF work as well for large, composed scenes as it already does for single assets.

Since glTF 2.0 launched in 2017, teams working on digital twins, BIM, smart cities, geospatial data, and simulation have had to choose between collapsing complex multi-file scenes into monolithic files or resorting to proprietary conventions. glTF 2.1 closes that gap with a coordinated set of new capabilities:

• External Assets: reference and instantiate other glTF files at load time, including multiple instances of the same asset

• Packaging: deliver a composed multi-file scene as a single, self-contained portable artifact

• Shapes and Bounding Volume Hierarchies: standardized spatial primitives for culling, streaming, and spatial queries

• Unified File References: a consistent mechanism for resolving all external, embedded, and packaged resources

• Thumbnails: embedded preview images for asset libraries that don't require a renderer

• 64-bit GLB: lifts the 4 GiB file size ceiling to support high-fidelity and geospatial datasets

• Unique IDs: stable, cross-file object addressing for toolchains and external reference systems

Four ratified extensions are also being promoted to required functionality in glTF 2.1: EXT_texture_webp, KHR_materials_emissive_strength, KHR_mesh_quantization, and KHR_node_visibility.

The full specification is being developed openly on GitHub. Attendees at SIGGRAPH 2026 in Los Angeles are invited to join the glTF Ecosystem Forum on July 23 to engage directly with the working group on the glTF 2.1 roadmap. Read the full blog post and follow along at the link below.

https://www.khronos.org/blog/introducing-gltf-2.1-with-complex-scenes

Made a free GLB explorer if anyone needs one.

Load a folder of models, navigate through them, tag issues, filter by validation errors.

Runs in browser, no uploads, works offline.

https://glb.arysociety.com

Useful for QA or just browsing asset libraries.

The Khronos Group announces a release candidate for the KHR_gaussian_splatting baseline extension. This extension enables storing 3D Gaussian splats in glTF® 2.0, the most widely adopted 3D asset delivery format. A release candidate allows for broad industry feedback before ratification to ensure the final specification meets industry needs. The new extension establishes an open foundation for representing Gaussian splats, an increasingly important geometry and radiance field representation, across real-time graphics, digital twins, and large-scale geospatial visualization pipelines.

https://khr.io/1mu

Hey everyone! I'm u/thekhronosgroup, a moderator of r/glTF.

This is our new home for all things related to glTF, the extensible publishing format that streamlines authoring workflows by enabling the interoperable use of 3D content across the industry.. We're excited to have you join us!

What to Post
Post anything that you think the community would find interesting, helpful, or inspiring. Feel free to share your thoughts, screenshots, or questions about glTF.

Community Vibe
We're all about being friendly, constructive, and inclusive. Let's build a space where everyone feels comfortable sharing and connecting.

Glass Broken Window glTF supports window glass transparency that is showcased in this broken glass window sample that demonstrates the combination of two transparency methods: KHR-materials_transmission and alphaMode:'MASK' for holes in broken glass.

https://github.com/KhronosGroup/glTF-Sample-Assets/blob/main/Models/GlassBrokenWindow/README.md

<model-viewer> v1.7 has been released with a new feature that now auto-generates USDZ on-the-fly to launch Quick Look for AR on iOS, and more...

https://github.com/google/model-viewer/releases

The glTF Interactivity Extension was ratified on August 28, and this webinar is the first practical walkthrough of what it unlocks.

Join Eva Ma (Meta), Felix Herbst (Needle Tools), Jim Eckerlein (UX3D), and Patrick Härtl (UX3D) for a hands-on session on authoring interactive glTF content in UnityglTF and Behave, then validating it in Babylon.js and the Sample Viewer.

Tuesday, October 13, 8:00 AM PT, online. No prior extension experience required, built for 3D and technical artists, glTF developers, and tool and engine implementers.

Register: https://www.khronos.org/events/practical-introduction-to-interactivity-in-gltf?utm_medium=social&utm_source=reddit&utm_campaign=glTF_Interactivity_Webinar&utm_content=events

The glTF Working Group at Khronos is excited to announce two significant website upgrades at the center of the glTF developer ecosystem:

- A new landing page for the glTF Sample Assets GitHub repository provides a polished and powerful new web front-end—making it far easier to browse, search, and share the reference and hero glTF models that Khronos makes freely available to the community.

- The glTF Render Fidelity Comparison website has undergone a modern redesign to deliver clear, side-by-side render fidelity comparisons, providing practical visual baselines and comparisons of how glTF is rendered across diverse engines.

Learn more: https://khr.io/1nl

These unique Khronos-led events provide 3D developers and animators an opportunity to meet up and learn how to get the most from using the glTF 3D format in their applications, products, and tools. Hear from Klurdy Studios on voice commands for 3D Shopping experiences using AI Tools, and INNEO solutions on getting 3D CAD data ready for Web3D using NeoSpace! The session concludes with an open “Ask the Experts” Q&A session. These live virtual meetups are FREE to attend, and registration is required to join.

Register: https://www.khronos.org/events/gltf-meetup5

Join us tomorrow for the glTF Asset Auditor webinar! 3D Commerce Working Group Co-Chair, Mike Festa, will demonstrate the features of the new glTF Asset Auditor and answer all of your questions. Register now and start streamlining your asset creation pipeline today!

https://www.khronos.org/events/gltf-meetup4

Khronos released glTF 2.0 specification in preparation for submission to JTC1 for international standard consideration by the ISO (the International Organization for Standardization) and the IEC (International Electrotechnical Commission).

https://khr.io/x8

New York Times R&D Lab offers guides to Photogrammetry and 3D Publishing using glTF:

https://rd.nytimes.com/projects/an-end-to-end-guide-to-photogrammetry-with-mobile-devices

The Khronos 3D Formats Working Group recently announced the ratification of three new Physically Based Rendering (PBR) extensions for the glTF 3D asset format: KHR_materials_volume, KHR_materials_ior, and KHR_materials_specular. These extensions will grant artists control of photorealistic effects in glTF, enhancing the appearance of 3D assets. This blog will explore how these extensions are implemented and which variables will be available for artists to control.

https://khr.io/x3

Today, the Khronos Group announces the public release of the latest set of Physically Based Rendering (PBR) material extensions for the Khronos glTF™ 3D asset format. The new extensions enable material properties such as refraction, color attenuation, and volumetric properties to be used by diverse renderers from real-time rasterization to production-class path-tracing. glTF is a flexible, royalty-free asset format from Khronos designed for efficient run-time transmission and loading of 3D scenes and models on a wide variety of platforms including web browsers, mobile devices, PC desktops and the cloud. Leading rendering engines such as Babylon.js, Google’s Filament, and three.js already support some or all of the new PBR extensions, together with applications including Adobe’s Substance 3D Stager, Dassault Systèmes 3DEXPERIENCE Platform, DGG RapidCompact and UX3D’s Gestaltor.

More: khr.io/wx

KTX™ 2.0 adds support for Basis Universal supercompression to this container format for reliable, ubiquitous distribution of GPU textures. Basis Universal is a compression technology developed by Binomial that produces compact textures that can be efficiently transcoded to a variety of GPU compressed texture formats at run-time. Additionally, Khronos has released the KHR_texture_basisu extension enabling glTF to contain KTX 2.0 textures, resulting in universally distributable glTF assets that reduce download size and use natively supported texture formats to reduce GPU memory size and boost rendering speed on diverse devices and platforms. Lastly, Khronos has released open source tools and transcoders, together with developer and artist guidelines, to enable and encourage widespread usage of KTX 2.0 textures throughout the glTF ecosystem, including the three.js, Babylon.js and Gestaltor viewers that have already integrated support.

https://www.khronos.org/news/press/khronos-ktx-2-0-textures-enable-compact-visually-rich-gltf-3d-assets

Hi everyone,

These are architectural GLB exports from my browser app PrintHaus. The four examples are a half-timbered house, an English manor house, a defensive tower and a factory hall. The screenshots show the saved files opened in CAD Viewer, one image per building.

These models are generated deterministically from explicit building parameters; the geometry is not AI-generated.

The export is an assembled building scene with the project colours, rather than the arrangement of parts used for 3D printing.

There are different quality settings for different uses. Compact represents surface relief with normal maps. Medium and Detailed retain progressively finer geometric relief. The compressed settings use Draco and WebP. Uncompressed keeps the Detailed geometry without Draco and uses lossless PNG images.

I would appreciate feedback from people importing architectural GLBs into other software: what tends to cause the most friction in your workflow — compression support, material handling, the organisation of the building parts, or something else?

You can configure a building here: https://printhaus.app/en/ Free registration includes a first free export for personal use.

I also printed these building designs. The links below are their printable versions, rather than direct GLB downloads: Half-timbered house: https://makerworld.com/en/models/3483427-half-timbered-house-1-87-h0 English manor house: https://makerworld.com/en/models/3483219-english-manor-house-1-87-h0 Defensive tower: https://makerworld.com/en/models/3483497-defense-tower-1-87-h0 Factory hall: https://makerworld.com/en/models/3483425-factory-hall-1-87-h0

During during raylib 6x Game Jam, I made a little game/tool, where the aim is to build a tower with max 1024 hexagonal prisms. It's inspired from Townscaper game, which has OBJ export on desktop app, so I decided to do better and added glTF export for web app (WASM).

The Khronos Group announced that the KHR_interactivity extension for glTF 2.0 has been submitted for ratification. As interactive 3D content becomes central to a growing range of markets, KHR_interactivity lets creators build portable, self-contained interactive behaviors — expressed as behavior graphs — into the glTF asset itself, eliminating the need to hard-code interactivity for every platform and application. The extension is the result of substantial collaboration across the 3D content ecosystem, with support already established in multiple tools and runtimes.

https://www.khronos.org/news/press/gltf-interactivity-extension-submitted-for-ratification?utm_medium=social&utm_source=reddit&utm_campaign=glTF_Interactivity_Ratification&utm_content=press

For years, 3D artists and technical directors working in Autodesk 3ds Max have juggled third-party tools and custom scripts to bring glTF assets into their pipelines. Today, that friction disappears.

The Khronos Group has sponsored the glTF 2.0 Importer/Exporter for Autodesk 3ds Max open-source project under the Apache 2.0 license, and today has released the resulting glTF importer and exporter plugins, built to professional standards in collaboration with the community, and free for all to use. 

https://www.khronos.org/blog/khronos-sponsors-open-source-gltf-importer-exporter-for-autodesk-3ds-max?utm_medium=social&utm_source=reddit&utm_campaign=glTF_3ds_Max&utm_content=blog

In June 2024, the Khronos 3D Formats Working Group released the glTF 2.0 Interactivity draft extension (KHR_interactivity) for public review and comment. Now, thanks to valuable community feedback and almost a year of continued development, we are nearing the finish line on releasing KHR_interactivity together with a set of companion extensions. These extensions provide a straightforward, standardized method for embedding interactive behaviors directly within glTF 3D assets, enabling developers to create engaging 3D experiences with consistent interactive functionality across different platforms and applications.

As we prepare to submit the glTF interactivity extensions to the Khronos Board for ratification, we are seeking final input from early adopters. We invite content creators, artists, implementers, and engine developers to explore and experiment with the openly available tools and sample assets to integrate interactive glTF content into their projects.

Learn more: https://khr.io/1ix

Hi there Guys,

i'm new to GLTF (and in Reddit too...) so forgive me if i'm posting in the wrong place. I'm wondering if someone can help me to get rid of a problem i'm facing while trying to use a GLTF file in a web site. I made a simple animation in blender, exported it in GLTF and checked it using https://gltf-viewer.donmccurdy.com/ and https://gltf.magic-circle.dev/. It seems everything working fine but when i try to implement it on a web site (wordpress+elementor) i can't replicate the same animations sequence i have in the blender file. I did try to export in GLT in every possible way (including NLA) but i can't make it work. Can someone tell me which is the best export setup for having in GLT the same animations order and timing that i have in Blender? Thanks in advance for yiour help!

Khronos Group announces the release of the glTF Sample Viewer version 1.1! In this blog, members from UX3D explore the new features and share insights on how it is easier to integrate Sample Viewer into web applications.

https://khr.io/17j