The VRM Consortium, Inc., the creator and advocate of the VRM 3D avatar file format, which is based on the glTF™ 2.0 open standard, has announced a collaboration with The Khronos Group, the developer of glTF, to advance the international standardization of VRM. Both parties will work together to develop the VRM and glTF formats as global open standards supporting interoperable 3D avatars.
VRM, proposed by Shinnosuke Iwaki, the Technical Committee Chair of VRM Consortium, is a platform-independent 3D avatar standard designed for interoperability in the metaverse era. First released in Japan in 2018, VRM has supported diverse applications and services, including the metaverse communication service “VirtualCast,” 3D character creation software “VRoid Studio,” and the metaverse platform “cluster.” It has already become the de facto industry standard for avatar integration across platforms within Japan.
About VRM
VRM is a platform-independent 3D avatar file format originating from Japan, designed to enable interoperability in the metaverse era. In addition to traditional 3D model data such as textures and bones, VRM can handle information necessary for first-person avatar control, such as gaze settings. It aims to standardize varying scales and coordinate systems across different environments, allowing 3D avatars to be used seamlessly on any platform. Taking into account the nature of avatars and how people use them to bring out their personalities, avatar-specific licenses can be embedded into the VRM file, such as whether others can use the avatar or whether it can be used in violent representations. Currently, version 1.0 of VRM is available.