Rust implementation

[Filyus]

Hello everyone! It took me about a month of vibe coding in my spare time to create the Draco library entirely in Rust. It wasn't easy and required a lot of patience, but I'm finally happy to share the code with everyone:
https://github.com/Filyus/draco-rust

The current Rust crates live here:

• https://github.com/Filyus/draco-rust/tree/main/crates/draco-core
• https://github.com/Filyus/draco-rust/tree/main/crates/draco-io
• https://github.com/Filyus/draco-rust/tree/main/crates/draco-gltf

I also wrote WASM modules and a sample web application for conversion:
https://github.com/Filyus/draco-rust/tree/main/web

Current optimized WASM size comparison:

Module	Raw	gzip	What is included
gltf_reader_bg.wasm	228.8 KiB	94.2 KiB	Reads .gltf/.glb files, parses glTF JSON with serde_json, handles GLB containers, and decodes KHR_draco_mesh_compression payloads.
Google draco_decoder.wasm 1.5.7	279.2 KiB	86.5 KiB	General Draco decoder for raw Draco buffers. No glTF JSON or GLB container handling.
Google draco_decoder_gltf.wasm 1.5.7	188.1 KiB	62.0 KiB	Smaller Draco decoder subset for glTF KHR_draco_mesh_compression payloads. It decodes the extension's bufferView data but does not read .gltf/.glb files.

draco-core, draco-io, and draco-gltf are now published on crates.io, with CI, fuzzing, docs.rs builds, package verification, and GitHub release tags in place.

[Filyus]

I’ve implemented all prediction schemes and full compression level support (with some assistance from an LLM). I’m planning to release it today or tomorrow.

If my measurements are correct, the results look very promising: the Rust implementation is ~10× faster for encoding and ~5× faster for decoding, while producing byte-for-byte identical .drc output.

Stay tuned. Thanks for keeping this issue open.

[jfuruness]

any updates on this out of curiosity?

[Filyus]

Sorry for the delay — ended up being a month rather than a day!

The implementation is now feature-complete: all prediction schemes (including UV TexCoords), Edgebreaker with valence-based traversal, all attribute types, zero unsafe code, and byte-for-byte identical output to the C++ reference encoder across all speeds 0–10.

Performance: Rust is ~2× faster on encode and ~20–30× faster on decode for speeds 0–9 (Edgebreaker). Speed 10 (sequential / no Edgebreaker) is essentially at parity now.

The changes are now pushed. Thanks for your patience!

There may be some inaccuracies in the tests or bugs in the code, but I'm still improving it.

[jfuruness]

Very cool! Hopefully it ends up getting picked up by google. I didn't end up using it for the final product (I didn't realize texture and uv compression wasn't lossless, and I'm not all too familiar with this field) but this is a really cool project!

[Filyus]

Thanks again for the patience and encouragement in this thread!

The first real stable Rust Draco core release is finally on crates.io. 🎉

The hard parts are done:

• Pure-Rust Draco .drc encode/decode for meshes and point clouds
• Compression levels 0-10, including both sequential and EdgeBreaker paths
• Legacy Draco bitstream support for older .drc files
• No unsafe in the core crate source
• Malformed-input hardening and fuzzing as part of the workflow
• glTF/GLB support through KHR_draco_mesh_compression, plus full-scene glTF integration in a separate crate

Repository:
https://github.com/Filyus/draco-rust

Published crates:

• draco-core 1.0.4: stable core bitstream crate
  • https://crates.io/crates/draco-core
  • https://docs.rs/draco-core
• draco-io 0.2.0: OBJ, PLY, FBX, glTF/GLB readers and writers
  • https://crates.io/crates/draco-io
  • https://docs.rs/draco-io
• draco-gltf 0.1.0: full-scene glTF/GLB integration on top of gltf-rs
  • https://crates.io/crates/draco-gltf
  • https://docs.rs/draco-gltf

I’m really happy this is finally out in a form people can try. Feedback is very welcome!

[Filyus]

Current status:

• draco-core is production-ready.
• draco-io and draco-gltf are actively changing to find better architecture.

Current plan:

• STL support.
• GLTF 2.1 (draft) support to keep the new structures during decode and encode steps.
• FBX 7.1+ support or removing it completely in favor of GLTF and USD.
• Maybe USD support.