Are there any version control systems for 3d models / 3d data? [closed]

Question

Well the subject is the question basically. Are there any version control systems out there for 3d models. An open source approach would be preferred of course.

I am looking for functionality along the lines of subversion however more basic systems would be of interest as well. Basic operations like branching / merging / commit should be available in one form or another.

UPDATE: With open source approach I don't mean free but the option of heavily expanding and customizing the system when needed

UPDATE2: I don't know how to describe this in the best way but the format of the 3d model is not that important. We will be using IFC models and mostly CAD programs. The approach Adam Davis describes is probably what I am looking for.

Answer 1

This is going to be difficult since most 3D CAD programs do not take into account the possibility of revision, so when you load something and then save it again it may completely re-order the points (there are reasons for this, usually done for performance).

Further, large models represented in a text format are huge files, and will take forever to copy/merge/etc.

There is no current system that will manage this, but there's a really big need in the industry for it.

I would expect such a system would have a model normalizer that converts to and from the desired CAD format and the revision format. It could then handle merges and track changes more easily.

It would also need to output diffs in a form that you could open a "diffed" model in a cad program and the changes are shown in a different color or otherwise highlighted. No one is going to be able to look at a text diff and understand what they're looking at. This diffing program would ultimately need to support understanding that two models are the same even though the 0,0,0 location and rotation are not the same (difficult matching problem) and give the user some interface to allow them to help it when it gets stuck.

You'd probably have to deal with the parts of the model separately (bones, mesh, textures, etc) and have a third file that synchronizes them when converting them to an inclusive model file for use and modification.

It's not a trivial problem... But if you started on something that just handled meshes and open sourced it, you'd probably get a lot of people interested.

Answer 2

Although this question is old, it's still in Google's results for 3d version control. Luckily in the years that have passed since the question was asked, Github has started supporting 3d STL files with visual diffs!!