Poly – Browse, Discover and Download 3D Objects | Hacker News Reader

Poly – Browse, Discover and Download 3D Objects

poly.google.com

249 pointssidcool57 comments

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There are lots of sites full of 3D models.

- Thingiverse

- 3D Content Central. http://www.3dcontentcentral.com

- GrabCAD. https://grabcad.com/library

- 3D Part Library. http://www.3dpartlib.com/

- 3D Warehouse. https://3dwarehouse.sketchup.com

The ones for CAD are more useful, because they usually have the dimensions right. You download those because you want the parts to fit. For competitive reasons, they tend to be good looking models, even though that's not strictly necessary.

https://sketchfab.com/models/popular

That depends on the purpose. A place for files in Blender format: http://www.blendswap.com/

Here is topic[1] (on YSFHQ[2] forum) with wide list of websites & repositories that has free 3D models that could be downloaded without registration, collected by users and modders of YSFlight[3] simulator

[1] https://forum.ysfhq.com/viewtopic.php?f=223&t=8173

[2] http://ysfhq.com

[3] http://ysflight.org

Of course there is a huge varierty in types of '3d models' - from stylised low-poly for games etc. (what this seems to be), to refined 3d art, accurate models of existing buildings, parametric architectural product models and shader effects (e.g. https://www.shadertoy.com/).

As a side note the sketchup 3D warehouse used to be owned by Google in fact, and some of its best attributes (geolocated buildings) were lost in the google process (as part of their switch from using sketchup to populate 3d maps, to 3d city views from composite aerial photos and lidar).

Also remix3D, by Microsoft: https://www.remix3d.com

A slice of cheese both on top of and under the patty. It feels like google is just trolling now.

https://poly.google.com/view/eke7qcu_FR2

https://twitter.com/sundarpichai/status/924487551372615680

lol

haha, first thing i looked for too!

And what about #borsch ? ;-)

https://twitter.com/Ukraine/status/925017390664048640

... and now #borscht on Mashable[1] :-D

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15605658

Sweet they use my SAO and limited depth blur shader:

https://www.gstatic.com/external_hosted/threejs-r87/examples...

Here's the blog post announcing it: https://blog.google/products/google-vr/poly-browse-discover-...

Cool, but I don't really get the intended audience, if there's any specific? Games? I guess VR/AR stuff, like Google cardboard.

I like that they have the C64: https://poly.google.com/view/9Qc5EtYmJry although they call it "Keyboard (not combined)".

I think it's similar in spirit to sketchfab. Before this Google had separate object libraries for Tiltbrush and Blocks, now it'll be unified. They also have hinted on twitter to be releasing an official API which would (in theory) allow developers to include objects in WebVR/AR scenes.

AR/VR would definitely make sense. Especially in some sandbox mode where you can place models around you, having a quickly accessible library of low poly models integrated would be awesome.

The other day I needed a simple coffee mug model to preview a design I was making in Adobe's new Dimensions CC app (basically easy way to add textures to models and envs for product pre-vis).

All the sites I found with quick googling had either unfitting models or weird file formats that Dimensions app didn't accept. But searching "mug" on Poly just now and importing the .obj worked just fine. Slap that design on there, render, review and order custom mug from a nearby printing shop with confidence that the design will fit fine.

Just one use case for free and quality models.

Did none of these work?:

https://sketchfab.com/tags/mug

I'd be surprised

In hindsight, sketchup probably would've been a great asset for Google to still own

It's a shame they sold it. It still has the highest modelling capability / difficulty ratio of any 3D software I've seen. Also the 3D Warehouse was a load of fun.

I used to think this, but interestingly, after learning several other CAD platforms, you realize both how limited SketchUp is and how the usability is really not substantially different with the huge exception of the onboarding experience. (Not to even get in to what garbage geometry it barfs out.)

There is a traditional UI paradigm in the CAD world which is totally divorced from the desktop UI world that's become ubiquitous in the past few decades. SketchUp was succesful mostly because it rethought all that based on what laymen are familiar with. But Especially at it's absurd new price-point, I think the argument for SketchUp's existence would go away entirely if Rhino just added a waaaaay simplified default workspace, enabled a sensible set of snapping options and the gumball by default, and maybe added a handful of contextual cues for common manipulation tools.

Real important question is why is there no Stanford bunny in this database?

It has the Utah Teapot at least: https://poly.google.com/view/3pxNWuQ-iii

Slight tangent, but does anyone here have recommendations for a good serialization format for 3D models for the web? Think for loading into Three.js. Ideally something that can be converted to/from Collada. It seems like a lot of the standard file formats are quite heavy.

Edit: glTF? Not sure how good tooling is for this yet, but looks promising.

Wavefront OBJ, and gzip it if you must.

glTF adoption is growing very quickly - 2.0 was only finished a few months ago and there is lots of tooling already: https://github.com/KhronosGroup/glTF#gltf-tools

Gtlf is where we are all headed but you’re right, the tooling hasn’t caught up yet. Google Draco[1] is also an important new development. Compressed meshes and point clouds! It works well and has three.js examples.

I have no idea why no one is talking about Draco anywhere. It’s a hugely important new tool. MPEG for vectors!

I think FBX works well with three.js too.

[1] http://www.github.com/google/draco

Draco looks exactly what I need actually -- thank you!

Shameless plug, the three.js fbx converter supports a number of formats including Collada: https://github.com/mrdoob/three.js/tree/dev/utils/converters...

Thanks, this looks really useful too! I had no idea it was there.

GLTF is too new to be adopted en masse and too many systems support collada/obj out of the box already to make people switch.

That said, I think it's a great implementation. There are technical roadblocks - most notably that 3D authoring tools (3DSMAX, Cinema4D etc...) don't support export of GLTF natively yet.

https://www.remix3d.com/ competition

Seems like a Pinterest and SketchFab hybrid.

Can't see a single download button on the models there.

It would be cool if this let you search the database based on topological properties similar to Thingi10K: https://ten-thousand-models.appspot.com

This is super useful when finding models to test or benchmark algorithms.

I think the Sketchfab 3D viewer is superior to Poly.

Anyone read the book 'Ready Player One' ?

Stumbled across this piece that was inspired by it https://poly.google.com/view/9M6BxvotJoD

very cool

Anyone know what the poly-limit is for uploaded models?

Would really like to see them support GLtf from Khronos as an input/output(API) file format. That's one of the formats we're watching closely at http://realityzero.one

I may just do a test upload of some of our scanned models later on. In fact have been scanning a load of Jurassic era fossils that will be part of the supporting cast for a late YC application submission :-) Might need to polyreduce but may still look good on Poly if poly-limit is not too low.

Interesting business. Model cost was killing me 10 years ago when I ran a virtual world company.

Do your company just handle static models right now? Animated ones are a whole new level of difficulty. How about generating levels of detail on the model? So many more things that are challenging! Good luck.

I miss Viewpoint Data Labs' online free archive of 3D models .. it was once the most extensive collection of diverse objects out there, back in the early days of the web, but with the (then-) rise of VRML and early VR hype, its owners decided it was a property with some commercial value, and they took it offline. And we've been trying to replace it ever since ..

If you want a way to discover 3D printable stuff specifically, check out http://stl.garden/

It's something I made a few weeks ago for fun to discover STL files on GitHub.

Let me know what you think :]

Some of those Tilt Brush paintings, especially the ones by Elizabeth Edwards, are amazing.

Am I the only one who can't seem to view these properly on stable Firefox?

I'm running it in 56.0.2 without trouble.

With a 3D print category and multiple part uploads (for assemblies) this could have a shot at replacing Thingiverse. I think people are still eager to find an alternative.

Would be nice to properly render flat shaded models, Im guessing there'll be a lot of lowpoly stuff here.

Uploading works fine, I can see and rotate my model but there is no option to sell models so I don't know.

There's been a lot of google posts on HR relating to google products. Are people just genuinely excited by what they are doing, or is there astroturfing going on?

Occam's razor. Google is a huge tech company that makes lots of cool stuff. HN is a forum with a strong interest in technology. It makes perfect sense that a new Google product would make it to the front page here.

It's like a poor ripoff of https://sketchfab.com/

More competition drives innovation.

Very similar to Sketchfab

how do you actually download?

There's a 'Download' link under the 3D view. Gets you a zipped (OBJ) model and material definitions.

am i blind?

https://i.imgur.com/NOjj7b2.png

Hmm, strange. https://vgy.me/cmUQQS.png

Maybe it's hidden under that "3 dots" button in a narrower window?

OMG someone from the 90's called and wants their models back.

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