Humanoid Animation (HAnim) and X3D Standards: Capabilities and Prospects
Joe Williams and I presented an overview and progress report on Web3D Consortium’s standards development work as part of an MSF Town Hall on 19 November 2025.
This event provided updates from multiple organizations contributing to Metaverse Standards Forum (MSF), also including Qualcomm, Meta, VRM Consortium with Khronos glTF, and Pixar. Full event abstract:
As we are studying the interoperability aspects of Character and Avatars delivery systems, it is important to maintain and develop an understanding of the evolving Character and Avatars landscape. To collect thoughts and discuss the future of Character and Avatars, the 3D Asset Interoperability Working Group at Metaverse Standards Forum organized an open cross-industry Town Hall.Topics of shared interest include:
Understanding Character and Avatars production related challenges,
Sharing information on the activities of various industry organizations,
Identifying activities that we as an industry can do to enable a healthier Character and Avatars ecosystem,
Overarching character and avatar standards, and
Translation frameworks for characters and avatars.
Our contribution to this town hall shows 25 years of steadily advancing efforts by dedicated members of the Web3D Consortium Humanoid Animation (HAnim) Working Group. Current activity is bringing rigorous, validatable, and practically repeatable HAnim human models onlineusing Web standards. Development of multiple open-source tools and converters are demonstrating author-defined model poses, interactive behavior interpolation, BVH-style motion animation, archival metadata, and even anatomical correctness. All HAnim example models are published online using the Web-viewable X3D Graphics standard.
The Characters Town Hall Video can be found on YouTube. Our presentation link also follows below.
Humanoid Animation (HAnim) and X3D Standards: Capabilities and Prospects (YouTube)
Special thanks to Aaron Bergstrom of North Dakota University for several of the nine interactive Web demos that are linked in the presentation briefing, playable in any Web browser.
Technical footnote: although demo framerate in the video recording is choppy, trying the examples yourself typically shows full-speed interactive response (30fps or greater) on laptop, tablet, and handheld Web browsers.
The Web3D Consortium is a non-profit, international Standards Development Organization (SDO) that holds a Class A Liaison relationship with International Standards Organization (ISO), is a member of the U.S. National Standards Body INCITS, maintains an active liaison with the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), and is a founding member of Metaverse Standards Forum (MSF).
Don Brutzman is a computer scientist and career submarine officer, now retired as an Associate Professor from the Naval Postgraduate School (NPS) in Monterey California. His development efforts include applying open standards for Web-based visualization using Extensible 3D (X3D) graphics, underwater robotics, implementing robotic data strategies, Network-Optional Warfare (NOW), Ethical Control of Unmanned Systems, and distributed simulation. His research interests include real-time interactive 3D computer graphics, underwater robotics, artificial intelligence (AI), and distributed networking for large-scale virtual environments.
