We analyzed the three main open standards dealing with three-dimensional (3-D) graphics content and applications, X3D, COLLADA, and MPEG4, to clarify the role of each with respect to the following criteria: ability to describe only the graphics assets in a synthetic 3-D scene or also its behavior as an application, compression capacities, and appropriateness for authoring, transmission, and publishing. COLLADA could become the interchange format for authoring tools; MPEG4 on top of it (as specified in MPEG-4 Part 25), the publishing format for graphics assets; and X3D, the standard for interactive applications, enriched by MPEG-4 compression in the case of online ones.Since 1963, when Sutherland created the first computer program for drawing [ 1 ], the field of synthetic graphics has followed, as many others involving computers, more or less the same exponential growth foreseen by Gordon E. Moore in 1965 with respect to the advances in semiconductor industry. In the early years, the progress was pushed up by scientific interest, the real boom being reached when the need for special effects and 3-D graphics content came from the film industry and later from the video games. Of those two industries, the former leads to the development of technologies for the production of high-quality images, and the latter, which has already outgrown the former,