Why Land of Assets Standardizes on glTF
Why Land of Assets chose glTF over USD as the backbone for their Master Asset approach to ensure long-term interchangeability.
Ben Houston • 4 min read • February 19, 2026
Contributing to Three.js and the glTF standardization committee, then building 3D tools at Exocortex, ThreeKit, and Frantic Films, I’ve spent most of my career thinking about how 3D data moves. Across VFX pipelines and web-based product visualizers, the core challenge is almost always the same: interchangeability.
Today, at my new endeavor, "Land of Assets," we tackle the massive investment that goes into creating core visualization assets. Whether these 3D models are handcrafted by expert artists, generated by AI, or captured via scanning and photogrammetry, they represent a significant outlay of time and capital. To protect that investment, assets need to be future-proof. They must look consistently excellent today, tomorrow, and a decade from now, across any platform.
"Land of Assets" has standardized on glTF as the backbone of our Master Asset approach.
The Master Asset Concept
A Master Asset is your single source of truth: a high-resolution asset with detailed meshes and high-res textures, something you can zoom in on and admire the craftsmanship.
You only want to pay to create this master asset once. But to guarantee it looks as intended forever, it must be stored in a universally understood format. That format must prioritize broad compatibility over proprietary bells and whistles.
glTF: The Distillation of Standards
glTF is the distillation of standards.
glTF does not try to push the boundaries of 3D technology in any one specific dimension. Instead, it represents the common denominator. It is what the industry collectively agrees is the standard for shared 3D data.
Consider procedural geometry in Blender. Their node graphs are amazing pieces of technology, allowing for complex, non-destructive workflows. But that proceduralism is not natively interchangeable with Unreal Engine, Maya, or a WebGL viewer. Therefore, you won't find it in glTF. glTF prioritizes what can be universally read, so what you see in one tool is what you get in another.
Here is a glTF Master Asset from Land of Assets. Orbit and zoom to see the interchangeability in practice:
Why Not USD
Universal Scene Description (USD) is a fantastic format. In fact, at "Land of Assets," we do support exporting to USD for pipelines that explicitly require it. But we do not use it as our foundational Master Asset format.
Why? Because USD has effectively become the "everything tool." Most Digital Content Creation (DCC) applications (Maya, 3ds Max, Katana, Modo) have written custom extensions to USD to save out their highly specific features. You can write out a USD from Maya, load it back into Maya, and retain all of Maya's proprietary data.
However, if you take that Maya-flavored USD and drop it into Katana or Modo, those extensions either won't work, will barely work, or will result in an asset that looks completely different. USD works well when you want to push the state of the art within a specific, closed pipeline where everyone is using the exact same toolset. But its fragmented nature makes it a poor standard for genuine, cross-platform interchangeability. Standardize on glTF, not USD.
The Evolution of Standards
Standards do evolve. As new technologies mature and achieve true interoperability across the ecosystem, they eventually become part of the standard.
Take MaterialX, for example. It’s a node-based material interchange format that looks poised to become the new benchmark. It currently has support in several renderers and in Maya. However, it’s still missing in 3ds Max, and it only has partial implementations in Blender and other tools. Because it is not yet fully interchangeable everywhere, it isn't the universal standard yet. But as that ecosystem matures, formats like glTF will adapt to integrate these proven, stabilized technologies.
Until then, we rely on the proven stability of the current glTF specification. Standardizing on glTF ensures your Master Asset remains the definitive, uncorrupted version of your product, ready to be deployed anywhere.
A high-resolution Master Asset is only useful if you can deliver it efficiently. Drop a massive file into an e-commerce viewer and you’ll pay for it in load times and bandwidth. That’s where the "Land of Assets" optimization pipeline comes in, which I’ll cover in my next post.
This post is also available on Ben Houston's blog.