X3D (Extensible 3D)
Open BetaExport 3D buildings to X3D -- the ISO standard for interactive 3D graphics. XML format with navigation and lighting support. Successor to VRML.
Key Features
About X3D Format
X3D is the ISO standard for three-dimensional scenes, the direct heir of VRML but written in XML. Thanks to that the file is read by any parser, edited as text and embedded into a web page through X3DOM or X_ITE without plugins.
The export is taken for demonstrative tasks: an interactive model of a district on a department website, an appendix to a paper, teaching material, exchanging geometry with scientific software. This is the most "document-like" of the three-dimensional formats — it is put into a paper's archive and opened years later.
The file holds an X3D scene of version 3.3, Interchange profile: buildings are extruded from outlines into volume (LOD1, flat roofs), each is assigned a material colored by type of development, and a light source and a viewpoint are added. Very small outlines with an area under half a square meter are discarded as noise.
Height is taken from the height tag, otherwise from the number of floors at 3 meters each, otherwise from a typical height for that type of development, and as a last resort — 9 meters. The 3D export area is limited to 1500 km²: beyond that the scene turns into millions of polygons that no viewer will open.
What Program Opens X3D Files
The following programs and applications can open, edit, and work with X3D (Extensible 3D) (.x3d) files exported from OSM2CDR:
Format specifications
- Open standard
- 3D coordinates supported
- Lossless (no quality loss)
- Stores feature attributes
- Output: 1 file
- X3D (ISO/IEC 19775), VRML's XML successor. Opens in view3dscene, Instant Reality, X3DOM (browser-native).
Who Uses X3D Maps
How to Export X3D
How to Open After Export
- A browser through X3DOM or X_ITE — include the library and put the scene into the page; the model turns with the mouse and needs no plugins.
- view3dscene, FreeWRL, InstantReality — desktop X3D viewers: open it, walk around the scene, check the geometry.
- Blender — import through the Web3D X3D/VRML2 add-on (enabled in the preferences); if it is missing in your version, convert the file to glTF with view3dscene.
- ParaView — opens X3D as geometry for scientific visualization, handy for combining the city with computed fields.
- Editing as text — this is XML: the material color, the viewpoint and the lighting can be changed in an ordinary editor without opening a 3D program.
Popular maps in X3D
Get X3D (Extensible 3D) map exports
Download professional X3D maps from OpenStreetMap. Instant generation, any area.
Frequently Asked Questions
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