Publish interactive 3D content online | Hacker News Reader

Publish interactive 3D content online

sketchfab.com

50 pointsshowwebgl26 comments

What would be really cool : 3D print my uploaded models directly on Shapeways. Or point me to some 3D scan tools to make stuff like this : https://sketchfab.com/show/j4ArcCV4FeCmcwdan93blBfqOzi

working on it :)

Cool !! Can't wait to see it !

The technology is great, but I'm a little confused about your business model. It was not clear at all from the front page who this was for (people who want to show off their models) and whether paying for "models" was paying for being able to upload them or download them.

Why are you not selling models? It's big business, and you have much better technology than the others in the space. As an actual customer of those websites, I would definitely prefer to buy from you if the TOS was reasonable.

Giving people a plugin to show off their 3D models on their website or a social site (as someone else says, like Soundcloud) just doesn't seem like that big a market. Selling models is a huge market and one waiting to be disrupted by an interface and simplicity like this.

I disagree. 3D is art, and there's value in uniqueness. For example, game characters have to be always unique. Of course there's certain props which could be reused, but I don't think the market for 3D models is that huge. 3D models for printing purposes is a different story.

Another problem is that those 3D models could be ripped fairly easily (they are downloaded in your browser anyway). That would put away any serious sellers. Although, reusing stolen assets in games for example would be noticed. Of course, as a complementary monetization strategy, it wouldn't hurt to offer downloading with paid rights for reuse.

As a learning 3D artist myself, I think this is a really great way to show off your 3D and explore what others have done.

Why would you limit how many models people can add to a free account? You're basically telling people not to share.

If I'm paying for a Pro account but hit 101 models, my only option is to shell out 14 times more money for a Business account? While only getting 10 times more storage? That's a pretty shitty deal.

Get rid of the storage limits completely. The Pro pricing is fine. The ability to store models that aren't public is worth 9€ (~$12) per month.

The Business pricing would be fine if you were offering extra value. You commented that you're working on a Shapeways tie-in. This would be great to allow free and Pro users a way of ordering models that they can access. Give Business users a storefront.

Edit: When trying to signup, your TOS page is 404ing http://sketchfab.com/license

Terms page after login works https://sketchfab.com/terms

Rather the YouTube for 3d content I think, it's awesome, I believe in your project!

it's annoying that the back button does not work anymore when I load this website. Are they trying to force me to stay on their page?

When I load your homepage, it spams my browser history. Seems like a bug. (Chrome 22/Win32). Awesome application though.

Cool! Some suggestions:

1) For those poor ATI users on Ubuntu with Chrome, and probably others with driver issues, suggest that using FF instead of Chrome may help.

2) When in first-person mode and in full screen, why not use the Pointer Lock API to allow proper first-person controls?

This is very well implemented. Congrats! I think you guys can jack up the number of files for free users. This will help build up a nice repository of models.

How about incorporating some form of shape search tool - might help browse as the repository grows large?

The pricing page utilizes some odd phrasing. Apparently the free plan does not include "privacy". Am I the only one who was thrown by that?

Which webgl library are you using to load all those file formats if you dont mind me asking, and does it save as a JSON file?

I signed up.

osgjs. And all file format are handled by the server, converted after to a unified json + binary file

Out of curiosity, are you using AssImp ( http://assimp.sourceforge.net/ )on the backend and rendering to your format?

What's the browser compatibility for this?

It's WebGL, so it's runing on all modern browsers: Chrome, Firefox, Safari. We'll very soon release a fallback for the others.

It should be noted that IE doesn't support WebGL

http://superuser.com/q/353549/10142

There is a plugin for it though: http://iewebgl.com/

He did say though that IE won't work:

> it's runing on all modern browsers

IE10 is modern but doesn't support WebGL :(

So maybe it's not modern enough.

the soundcloud for 3d. i love it.

I wonder when will WebGL adopt the new OpenGL ES 3.0 features. In about a year?

Homepage is unusable on Safari on an iPhone.

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