Get Khronos Group’s open-source iOS app for viewing glTF files
3D standards body The Khronos Group has released a free iOS app for viewing glTF files.
The Khronos glTF viewer lets users view 3D models in glTF or GLB format, with PBR materials, either in augmented reality or against a plain background, on iPhones, iPads and desktop Macs.
Load and view models in glTF format on Apple devices
Designed as a lightweight file format for 3D assets, for use in web and real-time applications, glTF is one of the standards overseen by The Khronos Group.
Although not universally adopted, it is now supported in DCC applications including Blender, Unreal Engine – and, most recently, After Effects.
Although there are a number of free online glTF viewers, one developed by Khronos itself, the new app makes it possible to view glTF files natively on iPads, iPhones and Apple Silicon Macs.
The models can be viewed against a plain background or in augmented mode, with users able to rotate the model with touch gestures.
The app supports all the base features of the glTF 2.0 specification, plus PBR materials, including the newer clearcoat PBR extensions and Draco mesh compression.
Source code available under an Apache 2.0 license for other app developers
Perhaps more significantly, the source code for the app is available open-source.
Khronos intendes the code to serve as a readymade base viewer for developers that don’t yet natively support the glTF format in their own apps.
License and system requirements
The Khronos glTF viewer is compatible with iOS 16.0+, iPadOS 16.0+ and macOS 13.0+ on Macs with Apple Silicon processors. The source code is available under an Apache 2.0 license.
Download The Khronos Group’s free glTF viewer app for Apple devices
Read more about the glTF viewer app on Khronos’s blog
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