Dear Renaud, On Fri, 5 Jun 2009, Renaud Aubin wrote:
Asymptote may be a better choice since it supports newer PRC 3D format, that is much richer in features and has better prospects when it comes to support and development by Adobe. Ouch, another new 3D format! This will never end. I bet no valuable Open Source modeler (i.e. blender) support this one. The fact that asy supports PRC is good but I have no illusion about the conclusion of the 3d formats' war (just an endless pain for developpers)...
From my experience of work with U3D, writing an exporter turned out to be not that difficult, since for U3D there is VRML-like intermediate text
IMHO the major difference is that Adobe Reader is a 3D viewer with quite a userbase and lots of support resources behind. While the failure of 3D community to accept U3D as 3D JPEG is deplorable, PRC prospects in Adobe seem bright - they have bought the format together with the authors, make noises about submitting it to ISO, released documentation... format, but figuring out what are the limitations of Adobe viewer takes a lot of time. I do not remember if that applies to Blender, but googling showed me that in 2006-2007 people asked questions in lists/forums of 3D software pieces about 3D PDF output, but neither users were interested, nor developers excited. Sincrely, Michail