Content pipeline

The path an asset takes from an authoring tool into an engine's runtime: modelled and textured in Blender, Maya or a DCC tool, exported to an interchange or transmission format, imported by the engine, and converted there into whatever the renderer wants. Sixty-odd pages in this spoke treat engines as runtimes; this page holds the way in.

Sourced so far from one document, the gltf-specification, which supplies the pipeline's central distinction: an authoring format carries everything the artist needs while iterating and is verbose by design; a transmission format (glTF's word) is a "distillation target" — compact, runtime-neutral, loadable straight into GPU buffers, and silent on behaviour. Pixar's USD sits on the authoring side of that line (scene composition, layering, variants); glTF on the delivery side; FBX, historically, was pressed into both roles. Every engine here — godot-engine, unreal-engine, unity-engine, o3de — imports glTF; what each does after import (its own mesh format, material graph, animation system) is where the engine differences the spoke argues about begin.

Unsourced, and wanted: a studio's own account of its pipeline — which formats, which conversions, what breaks — and the USD documentation, so the authoring side is held from a primary too.

Related

gltf-specification · godot-engine · unreal-engine · unity-engine · o3de · webgpu · synthesis