The popular website building platform Squarespace has added support for Sketchfab embeds. And adding an embed couldn’t be easier: select ‘Embed’ when you’re inserting a new content block:

Next, copy a model link from your browser and paste it in:

That’s all! There are just two things to keep in mind:

• Sometimes it takes a few seconds for Squarespace to load your embed. If at first it says the model can’t be embedded, just wait and it’ll be fine.
• Don’t use the short skfb.ly links - those will not work.

Enjoy!

- Bart

When our World of Tanks Diorama Contest launched, the news was on all theirinternational World of Tanks portals - from Russia to Spain, France and their English version. ‘Work in Progress’ entries are already appearing on our Artwork forum!

Other cool embeds:

• Our Apple Watch model has appeared all over the web (including our 'Augmented Reality’ version), but when VC Fred Wilson uses it on his personal blog it really makes our day!
• I guess that after smart watches, smart glasses will be the next big thing - the Space Lumina are on presale and I rather like their product video. What do you think? Would you wear one?
• Erwan Davisseau is a video games veteran who has done work for Ubisoft, EA, Disney and Atari to name a few companies. He is using Sketchfab on his portolio site. Nice!
• I love handpainted textures - like Magnus Norén’s Footman Girl
• If you feel like a Nordic warrior and you want to complete the 5k run with obstacles of the Warrior Dash, check out what you’ll be up against on their website (pro tip: their training tips include 'beer guzzling’ ;-)
• CG Masters feature a detailed tutorial on game asset creation and close off their article with a cool Sketchfab model.
• Blender news site BlenderNation was showing Sketchfab headers on all their new articles for a week, giving a huge boost in pageviews to the featured models.
• Go and explore the new LG G4 on with this in-depth review on Journal du Geek ('Geek’s Journal’) and give the phone a spin!

Cool crowdfunding embeds

• C-mi is the first camera drone designed with real world usability in mind. See what you are capturing during flight and share it easily on social medias. The drone can even follow you - a 3D model of the GPS tracker is on Sketchfab! Preorder yours on Kickstarter.
• Also on Kickstarter, HemaVision is a computer vision thermal imager that lets you see in the dark and diagnose problems in your building or anywhere temperatures are important. 3 days left to get one!
• Protect your bike with the TiGr Lock. A strong, lightweight, titanium Bow-Lock designed to work in harmony with you and your bike. Elegant, versatile and simple, TiGr Lock protects your bike while freeing you to enjoy the ride. 200 people already preordered one!
• Fan of wooden products? Trobla is a beautiful wooden amplifier for your smartphone. With no complex technology involved, simple and sustainable, it can easily be thrown into your bag, so you can create atmosphere wherever you go.
• The Lunaluxx is combine both magnetic suspension and remote-phosphor lightning technologies, to freely suspend a light emitting disc in mid air. This beautiful levitating lamp is on Kickstarter as well, with a nice 3D model!
• With the MoonLight, your tent is now a positive contributor to your trip, not just something you crawl into at night. They are weight and cost competitive tents that are roomier, stronger, and have features that make them more reliable and easy to use. Check it out!
• Live on Indiegogo, the ergonomic and programmable ErgoDox EZ keyboard is now about to be easily available to everyone as a complete polished product. It’s a proven unique keyboard. Three weeks left to preorder yours.
• Meteor is an activity tracker created specifically for footballers. You wrap it around your calf, beneath your sock to gather the most accurate, real-time analysis of your shot strength, vertical jump and running attributes. It’s on Indiegogo as well!

- Bart

The winners for UCAC8 have been announced! Once again, the Unity community has created stunning work and we had a real hard time helping to select the winners. Enjoy the winning works, and read on to discover this month’s theme.

3rd place: Antonio Neves

Hidden treasure diorama - UCAC8 by Antonio Neves on Sketchfab

2nd place: Rafael Morais

UCAC8 - The Dwarven Chest of Infinite Cold Ale by Rafael Morais on Sketchfab

1st place: Essimoon

Chest of Wonders - UCAC8 by essimoon on Sketchfab

We’ve also teamed up with Unity again for the next Community Art Challenge. We’ll be contributing Sketchfab Pro memberships and a special prize (see below).

This months Challenge is themed “Shroom Of Doom”. This could be your typical poisonous mushroom in a patch of grass or maybe it’s a basked full of Mushrooms that will lead to your doom? There is a lot of room for interpretation here! Use your imagination! Impress us with your creativity and imagination. Let’s see something new and fresh!

As a result we want to see a beautiful small Diorama/Turntable of your version of a “Shroom Of Doom”

Extra prize: print your own prize with a €50 voucher for 3D HUbs! Sketchfab community member JuanG3D designed this awesome trophee that you can get 3D printed locally using 3D Hubs. The 1st place will receive a €50 voucher.

UCAC trophee by JuanG3D on Sketchfab

You will find the full announcement and the challenge rules on the Unity forum.

- Bart

I’m always on the lookout for good asset libraries. Here’s an interesting one that I thought you might enjoy: a library of 128 tiling texturemaps by Pixar, released under a Creative Commons license! While they date from 1993, Pixar has upgraded them for release. Enjoy!

Pixar One Twenty Eight includes:

• 15 beautiful bricks
• 13 fine fabrics
• 2 fences
• 3 floors
• 15 ground covers
• 8 marvelous metals
• 8 terrific roofs
• 9 sidings
• 2 animal skins
• 12 elegant stones
• 10 walls
• 28 exotic wood

And more … snails, paper clips, & iridescent ribbon

Updated for 2015

The texture library has been upgraded and now includes bump and normal maps. While created in 1993, this library still has many potential uses.

- Bart

MyTie3d v0_7 Illustration by Boris R. on Sketchfab

I met Sketchfab community member Boris Rabinovich at 3D Printshow in New York where he showed me his 3D printed tie. He has since published all the parts here on Sketchfab, allowing you to print your own copy. Today, we’re talking about the creation process of such a complicated piece.

Hi Boris, can you introduce yourself?

I studied math at the St. Petersburg State University focusing on geometry and topology. After completing my masters I taught college level math for several years. In 1991 I was accepted to a Brandeis University graduate program in math. Across the railroad track from Brandeis campus was the HQ of PTC where I found my first job in the US. I started working for PTC ​ as a summer intern in the geometric algorithms group and continued in a variety of roles in the R&D for CAD and Data Management products for a satisfying 20+ years career. At the beginning of the financial crisis I went back to Brandeis for a part time degree in Finance. In 2010 I became the chief architect of what became PTC Creo - a redesign of Pro/Engineer. More on LinkedIn.

What is your connection with 3D Printing?​

​In 2013 Hod Lipson visited PTC with an inspiring talk about 3D printing, which excited me enough to jump orbit. I bought an Ultimaker Original and started on a self-guided apprenticeship of additive manufacturing.​

What is your inspiration for designing this tie?​

The inspiration came from a vintage Armani tie design that appealed to me as a balanced patch structure: fairly regular but not boring.

How did you design the parts? What was your process and which software did you use? 

Technical inspiration came from the PTC Creo project to support configurable assemblies.​ I had quite a few variants in mind. Interchangeable blades: necktie and skinny , long and short. The blade could be printed in a solid color, reversible, or with an ornament. I designed 3 kinds of neck loops: short hooks, longer hooks, and a full loop with a ziptie on the back of the neck. And 3 variants of the knot: flat, super geeky with planetary gear, and one with a hole in the middle and a locking interface where a number of objects, 3d printed or not, could be inserted. I further wanted to reuse the same meso-material for bracelets, etc. All in all seemed like enough requirements to warrant use of PTC Creo Options Modeler. However, with each tile having unique shape, relationship between the tiles of the tie is too complex. ​T he blade consists of over 100 similar but unique tiles. Cost of tooling to manufacture so many unique parts with subtractive methods would be prohibitively expensive for a consumer product. With AM, the manufacturing complexity is gone while design and data management complexity remains.

The data was structured so that each key parameter would be defined once for the whole assembly and shared by all the parts. For that I created an empty part with the parameters (thickness, dimensions of the connectors, gap between the tiles), exported it out of Creo to a neutral file format, imported it back into another empty part and used that part as a starting template for all tiles. This allowed me to update all the tiles at once and gave me explicit control when to do the update.

Next I created a prototype tile where I modeled every possible connector (male/female, removable/fixed) and created a Publish Geometry feature for each connector type. Now to create a connector in a tile part all I had to do was to mark the desired location with a coordinate system, copy geometry from the prototype tile, and solidify it.

As a final preparation step I created the design pattern part, which defined shape of the whole tie as well as of each tile using sketched curves. To get the desired design I first imported the image and traced splines over it. Then I could move and adjust the curves as necessary. Individual tiles would reference the design pattern part in order to derive their own shape.

With this preparation in place, each tile became a lightweight part with only a few features, which regenerated quickly and reliably, for the most part. This structure served me well while I was working out the shape of the connectors needed to make the meso-material durable and flexible and to avoid tiles fusing together during printing. When making changes to the shape, however, I couldn’t find a reliable way to propagate changes from the design pattern part to the individual tiles. Before AM, massive late changes to the shape of the parts was unlikely due to high cost of re-tooling. Now, with zero tooling, the manufacturing complexity is gone, which puts additional pressure on the designer and the CAD tool. 

The knot part presented a data management challenge as all of its geometric complexity is hidden inside and I could not visually tell apart prints of different iterations. I had to introduce part numbering and attach QR code stickers to the prints.

For the first couple of months of this project I was ashamed by how hard it was to use PTC Creo. Over time I learned how to use it better, how to avoid some of the hidden traps, Creo 3.0 replaced Creo 2, and I began to enjoy some of Creo’s awesome capabilities. Still, changing roles from a software architect to an end-user has been a thoroughly humbling experience.

Can the parts be printed on an Ultimaker as is, or does the model require assembly after printing?

​The tie is too long to fit on the Ultimaker’s platform, so it is printed in 6 parts. The parts have to be assembled together, .

Got any future plans?

​The goal of MyTie3d project was to create a sellable 3D printed product - the goal I have so far failed to achieve. For example, the version now published on Sketchfab is not durable enough and is not easy enough to use to be sold. I have since redesigned all of the components but haven’t finished the knot part yet.

Most of the rest of my future plans are in software. AM technologies change design and manufacturing in many ways. Among them, accelerating innovation by allowing designers to prototype often. ​Daily prototyping is mostly done using prosumer level desktop printers utilizing FDM or SLA technologies. To reach its full potential, rapid prototyping should be fully integrated into the design process. I believe that a designer should be able to evaluate the printability, make corrections, setup the print, review the results of a simulation, initiate the print job, and follow its progress - all without leaving the CAD tool. That’s my plan.

Thanks Boris!

- Bart

FH-00 Gungnir by Nathanel Titane on Sketchfab

Are you into Lego? In this tutorial series, LDraw veteran Nathanel Titane introduces us to the different LDraw tools and shows how you can easily construct your own LEGO models and publish them to Sketchfab!

Now that you’ve gotten acquainted and have been using the LDraw system for a while, we gather you are now familiar with the handling of parts and their positioning throughout a simple model assembly.

Getting pieces together to assemble a component of what will be an eventual complex build is a fairly simple matter (assuming you’ve adequately planned out how you want the model to look and feel prior to doing so), by either prototyping a physical or virtual model beforehand.

Once you’ve laid out your workload, the process becomes almost natural after a few demanding projects, and is quite the fulfilment once it is accomplished.

Positioning

Now, to get matters into hand, you need to understand how positioning is handled within a model and how the selection of the parts within the sub-model assembly you will be handling, affects the overall x y z coordinates and calculations done by the editor (in this case LeoCAD).

This is important for you to get a glimpse of how you want to order a sub-model’s so called dependency to another, and how it will be positioned in relation to the overall project.

From here on in, please understand the word ‘transformation’ as 'translation’ or 'rotation’ of a part or group of parts unless explicitly specified otherwise. ^_^

From the get go, LeoCad defaults its transformation type to relative - understand relative as in one or more selected part(s) relative to another. On the other hand, you can easily switch out the transformation mode to absolute, hence all transformations will be done relative to the overall x y z coordinate system that is defined by the virtual space you are working in.

When in relative transformation mode, selecting individual parts or a set group of parts as a whole, the transformation will affect each part independently from its group setup or selection. In relative mode, you are able to modify the part’s placement and rotation no matter how it is placed on a model, without the need to disassemble or modify the model’s current setup. This is especially important in understanding when rotating elements as they will not rotate as a whole group in this case, but each element will rotate on its own individual axis in relation to the overall selection that will also be rotating relative to the virtual space.

Ideally, when handling groups or parts to be rotated, make sure to set the rotation method to absolute to avoid any weird results! ^_^

As far as the actual selection method goes, when handling a single part on its own, LeoCAD defaults the part’s x y z handle to its center or predetermined handle position, according to the part’s geometry.

If you are to select two or more parts, the last part selected will become the reference point for the transformation. If you are to generate a group, selecting a part within that group will make it the reference point for the group transformation as well.

What you need to look out for is the actual selection color: the part that is actively referenced by the editor will be highlighted in blue and will serve as the transformation handle.

As you are building the separate components of your model, keep in mind that the 0 0 0 coordinate for a starting element part is essential. It will greatly improve the overall manoeuvrability of elements in your build, given that, you will always have a relative origin somewhere within the sub-model you can depend on for positioning.

As a general rule, I start my sub-model (or component) by making sure that one of the hinges or joints that will serve as a critical transformation element can be accessed and moved independently, and if possible, positioned at the 0 0 0 origin.

Some components will of course not be as easy to plan out or as simple to set up, especially when trying to abide by the strict 0 0 0 origin guideline. In that case, make sure to have a planar or perpendicular reference for parts to always have a 'straight line’ reference to position your component.

This means, that if your model has some awkwardly shaped elements or sub-models in reference, make sure that you can set it up in a way to have some kind of linear brick assembly, be it vertical or horizontal, that’ll enable you to reference the transformation. If not (and I can only stress this so very much - from personal experience…) you will easily get lost within the multiple translation and rotation steps (WHICH ADD UP!) and you might not entirely be sure of how many degrees or LDUs you might have rotated or moved that element beforehand.

Tip:This bit of information will most definitely save you quite the bit of tears and frustration from messing up the alignment on a tranformation: the use of any bar-like part (the '4L lightsaber blade’ bar to my preference), that has a 1x1 x y or y z cross section will enable you to both pinpoint exactly where the rotation axis is, through any complex assemblies, and will also help you in actually rotating the element which could be located in any awkward spot, provided you select the bar element last as specified earlier on.

This is essential for future model updates and/or upgrades as it’ll help you substitute parts or whole models easily without worrying too much about that exact angle you put it at, be it 2 weeks, 5 months or 7 years ago…

All that being said, you still need to experiment and break some rules to get the best result possible when setting your model or project up. Whether it be that you enjoy giving it the coolest pose possible or simply want it set up in a clean and proper manner (the way I enjoy presenting mine). You will need to give these tips a quick run to make sure not to get lost or frustrated when putting your project together for final reveal.

Rendering

Prior to Sketchfab, pictures and renders were, (and ultimately still are) the best means to share your work and show it to the masses. Unless you are in contact with people who also use the LDraw system and would be able to use a real time renderer (LDView… wink wink) to view your work locally on their machine and provided you share the actual model file… there haven’t been too many other options around.

As stated in the previous chapters of this series, the LDraw specification is a great example of how a file type can be ultra flexible in how you handle it and what you can do with it.

In regards to rendering your models, you can pretty much do as you please, for as long as you’re either using an LDraw specific application or editor that will be able to handle outputting your model into images. The other possibility is to export your model to a more common 3D file format (.obj + .mtl, .3ds, etc.) and either use the model as is or tweak it, rig it, position it or even animate it before producing the renders you would like to showcase.

The latter does require the expertise and experience linked to creating advanced 3D content and knowing the adequate rendering techniques related to the applications you might be using (3D Studio Max, Cinema 4D, Blender and many others…)

In my honest opinion, and as far as my experience goes with having tested and/or used (for some time or indefinitely) most of the available LDraw utilities, LDView is the cream of the crop when it comes to rendering. Its ease of use make it a very reliable tool do simply view and render a model, or go in depth and thoroughly examine a model from various points of views and angles, enabling you to validate geometries, parts usage and assemblies, by cutting through the model or displaying it in wireframe. You can display the various sub-models using its multi model parser and even debug bad ldr and mpd syntax in case you ever manually edit your files.

LDView handles real-time 3D via OpenGL, where you can actively load and view your model as you build it or output a specific point of view or angle shot as a static render to use elsewhere: the possibilities are endless!

I personally use the command line 'ldview’ utility (!='LDView’ which is the GUI version of the utility) and have it set up through a script to batch render all my needed angles and standard POVs for my models, as I create new entries or update old ones. You can tailor LDView to your needs, from lighting to cameras, passing by the outlining of your model’s rendering or even the shading type or brick spacing (for that realistic feel) to give it any kind of mood you’d like the image of your work to propagate.

I hope you have fun looking into all these new technical tidbits, and I really do look forward in having your read em next time. Stay tuned for part 4: Advanced editing and Sketchfab uploads!

LEGO® is a registered trademark of the LEGO Group. LDraw is a trademark owned and licensed by the Estate of James Jessiman.

RenderThat connects designers and clients. Do you need a custom design? Describe your requirements on their platform and let designers pitch their ideas and services. As of today, you can share your work on RenderThat in 3D - as it’s meant to be.

What does the integration bring to RenderThat users?

Instead of uploading screenshots of a 3D model, designers can simply upload a 3D file to a project and present it to the client in an interactive way. Now clients and designer can easily coordinate product details, set camera angles for renderings and getting a feeling for the products look even before it is produced.

This brings us a step closer to our goal of creating an absolute efficient project workflow.

How does it work?

As soon as a designer attends a projects he can simply upload any type of file: images, videos or 3d files. Upload a file is as simple as dragging the file from your desktop into the browser.

Read the full announcement on the RenderThat blog.

- Bart

If we can 3D print the Venus de Milo with arms, what are her arms doing? Slate covered Cosmo Wenman’s initiative to develop a 3-D rendering that preserved the statue’s existing pose intact! A very interesting move to preserve and build on our cultural heritage. Several Greek newspapers wrote about it as well.

Other nice embeds:

• World of Tanks keep up sharing great models on their portals.
• After the announcement of Sketchfab partnership with Microsoft for the Hololens, the French Journal du Geek covered the demo of the new AR headset.
• Floyd Mayweather beats Manny Pacquiao in the “Fight of the Century” on last Saturday, and the Costa Rican newspaper La Nación shared a model of the fight belt.
• Cloud Imperial Games unveils the MISC Hull series of transporters for Star Citizens. Imperial News Network shared 3D models of them.

And crowdfunding campaigns of the week:

• Lock-Rs is a universal locking system for your digital and physical belongings that also allows you to protect and share experiences, and memories with the people you care about the most. It’s now on Kickstarter.
• The Rize Vaporizer is a beautifully designed, easy-to-charge, and customizable vaporizer. A 3D model of it is up on the Indiegogo project page! Check it out.

In Art Spotlight, we invite Sketchfab artists to talk about one of their designs.

Hi, I’m Mynja Lyngheim. I’ve studied 3D graphics and game design at NITH (now Westerdals) in Norway, and have gained quite a few pieces of white hair in the process. I only recently discovered Sketchfab, so I’ve only been testing it so far, but I love it and will be using it a lot in the future!

Usually when I have time, I make models and scenes based on the TV series Gravity Falls. That series has been a huge inspiration for me with its amazing story, characters, art style, lighting… everything, really. And I have made huge progress thanks to that.

“Movie Day” was inspired by one of the episodes from Gravity Falls. I just wanted to do something with a funny expression which I could also put up on Sketchfab, and that scene looked like a quick and simple one.

 (Screenshots from the TV series Gravity Falls.)

I usually work with cm and try to stay close to real sizes. It seems to work best in both 3ds Max and Unity, and it’s the easiest one to use.

I always start with the characters. In this case, I’d already done a few scenes with these characters, so they were ready for posing. I always make characters either by plane-modelling or from simple geometry depending on their style. These characters were just modelled from boxes, and I threw a ton of smoothing on them. I also keep each part (face, eyes, eyebrows, etc.) separate in the beginning so they’re very easy to work with.

Since they’re only being used in still scenes, I put the rig modifier before the smoothing. That way I can work with minimum polygons, and fix anything that doesn’t look good after I’m done posing – it’s a quick and dirty method, but it works fine for still scenes.

I’ve been experimenting a lot with rigs lately, and this time I used boxes and helpers instead of the bone system in 3ds Max. That method gave me quite a lot of freedom, and it’s quick and simple to copy and paste on other characters no matter how different built they are.



After the characters are modelled, I make all the stuff around them, starting with whatever is the best thing to use to get the sizes right – in this case, the bed. When I’m working alone, I just make everything in a single scene right away. For all lifeless things like these, I start with simple geometry. The popcorn actually took more time than everything else in this scene. Huge thanks to Felipe Gonzalez for making this awesome popcorn tutorial!

I used the particle system to get the popcorn in the bowl (only the top part, otherwise my laptop would blow up in my face). I also used the particle system to make some popcorn bounce off of Dipper’s face as he throws a handful of them in his mouth.

I pose the characters as soon as the objects they’re touching are recognizable. After that’s done, I remove the rigs so I can fix anything that didn’t look good with the rig.

Normally when making these kinds of scenes, I put most of the details in the models – I don’t take the time to unwrap and texture them. But after I was done with the modelling, I figured I could try making a scene with no lights.

I use RoadKill for unwrapping (I’m really not sure where you can get it these days. I got a standalone version, but there’s also plugins for 3ds Max and Maya), and then I fix the UV layout in 3ds Max.

I’ve mostly worked on games, AR, and VR scenes for phones, so I don’t spend much time unwrapping and texturing when I don’t have to.

I put single coloured materials on the models, and baked them to textures. I then sent the models to Mudbox and painted lights and shadows (as mentioned, I wouldn’t use any lights in this scene), and some details to the textures. The rest of the textures were drawn with Gimp.

It would probably turn out a lot better with ambient occlusion. I’m not skipping that next time.

 (Unwrapping and texturing is not my strong side.)

After this was all done, I formed the duvet to fit under Dipper, Wendy, the bowl and the pillow. Then I added new shadows on it in Mudbox.

I keep getting complaints about Wendy’s bra missing from her bed. I was at first lazy about it, and then I forgot it. Sorry! It would have been a funny detail!

And now I realized I completely forgot Wendy’s freckles! Now I have to fix the scene!

And that was it! Thank you for reading! It was a very quick project, but I’ll start working on 3d printable stuff soon which I’ll spend more time on.

Movie Day by MynjaL on Sketchfab

Thanks Mynja!

Don’t forget to follow Mynja here on Sketchfab. She has much more stuff on her her personal website too! 

Lots of small bug fixes and performance tweaks this week. Plus, a few great improvements to the viewer!

• Double click to center the camera: Double click anywhere on a model to zoom in and center the camera. This is great for inspecting different parts of a model. Double click anywhere in the background to reset the camera to the scene origin.

• Rotate the scene lighting:

  • ALT + drag rotates the environment and lights.
  • ALT + SHIFT + drag rotates only the environment.
  • ALT + CTRL + drag rotates only the lights.

• Support for Blender curves and metaballs: In Draft Mode, you will be notified when curves and metaballs are converted to meshes

• Improved model name cleaning: You can now name your models with periods, underscores, etc. and they won’t be removed (except for the file extension)
• Fixed an issue with images on Sketchfab.me portfolios
• Fixed an issue with turning Autoplay off for Playlists

- James

You may have read about the illegally-installed public statue of Edward Snowden in Fort Greene Park, Brooklyn, on April 6, 2015. Affixed atop an existing column, the statue was mounted by three anonymous artists and their helpers early in the morning, then covered and taken down by NYC Parks officials later that day. A month later, the artists released a file so anyone can make their own 3D printed version of the bust. A model of the sculpture exactly as it appeared in the park is up on Sketchfab and printable! It has been covered by Animal New York.

Other cool embeds:

• Okhlos is an upcoming PC game in which you lead a mob of ancient Greeks, tiny and pixeled, through mythological Greece, destroying everything that stands in their way. The team released very cool dioramas which convey Okhlos’ visual style much better than screenshots or videos do!

• African Fossils, a virtual lab showcasing a spectacular collection of fossils and artifacts found mostly at Lake Turkana in East Africa, is dedicated to create a growing repository of 3D models of significant fossils and artifacts, thus making them freely accessible to all.

• The U.S. National Park Service uses 3D visualization to help people explore nature, such as this fossilized Redwood Trio, Colorado, or this rockfall in the Capitol Reef National Park, Utah.

• World of Tanks keeps up sharing great tanks on their different platforms.

• The Microsoft Hololens continues to be covered and presented in 3D, in particular by the German Winfuture.

• A tuto on SketchUp modeling from plans and elevations has been illustrated by a model of The Burrow from the Harry Potter Series.

• Agisoft shared a very nice 3D reconstruction of the University of Maryland campus on their community page to illustrate the possibility of PhotoScan.

And some nice embeds from crowdfunding campaigns:

• Four days to go before the end of the Ockham Razor campaign on Kickstarter! It is a beautiful, clean and simple razor, made with a one-piece handle, precision cast in England from solid metal. Check it out!

• A lamp to receive notifications, find and charge your phone, sense temperature and brightness - and with interchangeable designs, here is the Pretty Smart Lamp. You can preorder one on Kickstarter as well.

• If you want to remove broken headphone plugs from your tablet or smartphone, the GripStick is the tool you need. It’s also on Kickstarter for less than a month!

Hi everyone! Hope you’re all well. My name is Simon and I’d like to introduce the game me and my team are working on: Shift Happens! (No spelling mistake)

The People behind the Scenes

Shift Happens is a 2-player cooperative platformer currently in late development by German indie game dev studio Klonk Games. We’re a team of ten former game design students who founded Klonk Games after our graduation and Shift Happens is the project we’ve put our upmost work and effort into. The project started with the working title “Mercury Shift 3D” according to a flash game of similar name we created during our study in 2012.

Gameplay & Plot

Shift Happens has a variety of gameplay features typical for Jump'n'Runs which are all in some way connected to our core mechanic: the shift (surprise? :D) It’s a simple, yet versatile mechanic that lets our characters switch sizes, from big to small or small to big. But keep in mind: If you switch sizes the other player inevitably does the same. Which means each of the two players has control over both of the character’s sizes.

Due to an inconvenient lab accident our two protagonists Bismo(red) and Plom(blue) are now unseizably connected, resulting in their ability to shift each others sizes. Both big and small size have their advantages and drawbacks: Small can run faster, jump further and can pass small tunnels or cracks. He’s also far more lightweight than big. Big is slower but a lot stronger than small. He can lift small crates, push and pull big crates and can even carry and throw the small character. After finding out about their strange condition clumsy Plom and energetic Bismo team up to find a way to get back to normal.

Shaping the Art

Getting our final art style took a lot of iterations (yeah, it’s typical for game development ;D). We went from hand-painted jungle setting to a more realistic but simplistic company/office type of setting until we ended up with our highly stylized textureless geometric look for the environment.

Our characters had a similar number of iterations: they went from being a blue and a red box to industrial robots to colored blobs made of mercury and orange juice (you read right).

The workflow we used differed a lot as well between all those settings.

For the jungle theme we used hand-painted textures which were based on rough sculpts inside ZBrush and Mudbox. Some of the bigger assets also had normal maps to not look “cheap” when being lit and to keep up with the level of detail that the smaller objects achieved just with their meshes. After some prototyping we discarded this look. It took to much effort to produce single assets, it was pretty error-prone due to the complex workflow and the overall look just didn’t match the quality we had in mind.

In the company setting we used a different approach: All objects didn’t get a texture but just a plain color from a pre-defined color sheet. We got a certain level of detail using decals and did some coloring and ambience using lights and lightmapping.

Still we weren’t satisfied. The quality of the overall look was kind of better but we didn’t like the direction it was heading to. Its overall mood was a bit too gloomy and dark for our taste and we felt like the look didn’t tap the full potential of the gameplay. So we started all over and finally got to our geometric low poly look we have now. Not only did it look pretty unique with well-defined color patterns, the polygonal shapes and an own shading we developed for the coloring of the objects, the workflow was agreeably simple and we got a pretty straight look dev process since we didn’t need to switch between programs to change colors or textures. They’re all done by the shaders and post effects inside Unity so we can change everything on the fly. We didn’t initially have the look ready as it is now. A lot of polishing and even more iterations than before were involved to get to the current level of quality.

One of the things I made during this project is the shading of the whole game which means essentially how objects look inside the engine and how they react to visual influences like light or the angle from which the surface is viewed. In a more regular workflow you’d use diffuse textures to get some basic color and detail onto an object but in our case that wasn’t what we wanted. Our objects worked with their polygonal shape alone and didn’t need any more detail like cracks or dirt. The only thing missing was the coloring and that’s where my work is at action :) The default Unity shading didn’t really fit our objects. It looked kind of boring and worked “too realistic” the way it did the highlights and shadows, not matching the stylized look of our assets. The shading I developed for Shift Happens is different in that matter. It works by blending a couple of colors in a more unique way than what the default shaders do. That way we have better control of how our levels look and we can put design decisions over realism. Another thing on the plus side is that the shading makes the shadows and polygonal details of the objects much better readable:

Upon developing it I looked at various concepts of computer graphics like BRDF, Fresnel and PBR and also drew inspiration from the works of illustrators like Timothy J. Reynolds (http://turnislefthome.com) and JR Schmidt (http://cargocollective.com/jrschmidt) who do a lot with this low poly style and are still one of our main source of reference due to their awesome work. I really recommend everyone to check them out if you like this look :) Now after the shading for the game is long done (at least for most cases that we need) I’m mainly working with the rest of our artists to get all of our remaining levels visually done so that we will be able to get Shift Happens ready for early access release. We’re targeting mid of 2015 for this.

Sketchfab and Shift Happens

Finally I’d like to explain some ideas we’ve been thinking of using Sketchfab for future updates on Shift Happens. In my spare time I’m currently trying to re-create our look inside of Blender (derivating the stuff our shaders normally do inside of Unity) to bake it onto a texture. That way we’ll finally be able to upload assets or even small scenes to Sketchfab for everyone to take a look. A 3d turnable scene of a level you’ll be playing inside the released game is much cooler than a screenshot of it, isn’t it? ;) We also thought about uploading animations of Bismo and Plom for everyone to enjoy as soon as animations are possible with Sketchfab (and we have a lot to show). Here’s a little scene I made while gearing to our shading. I’m pretty satisfied with the result so you might see more of Shift Happens on Sketchfab soon :D

We’re excited to announce that the Horniman Museum and Gardens have joined Sketchfab to scan and put their collection online.

They’ve been open since Victorian times when Frederick John Horniman first opened his house and extraordinary collection of objects to visitors. They’ve since grown and house internationally important collections of anthropology and musical instruments, as well as an aquarium and natural history collection.

Unusually for such an important museum, you can see their our collection up-close and face-to-face. You can even pick up, try on and play with some of their objects.

And now, you can explore them virtually too with the generous help of Thomas Flynn. The 3D models are available to download and can be used by 3D designers for non-commercial projects. To see the full range of models, visit their Horniman Museum page on Sketchfab.

We look forward to more of their collection in the coming weeks!

We’re excited to announce a contest with ReVault, a new smartwatch doubling as wearable wireless storage, which is live on Indiegogo now.

ReVault lets you store your files locally and get all the benefits of the public cloud without an internet connection. It features auto-backup, auto-sync, file restore, media streaming and notifications. It comes in two sizes, 32GB and 128GB, and it’s compatible with Android, IOS, Windows, OS X and Linux devices.

Contest Challenge

While you can wear it any way you want, all wearables need a charging dock, so the contest challenge is to design a beautiful, functional charging dock for the ReVault. It has to be something that people will be proud to showcase in their homes.

Since it’s a watch shape, the charging stand can’t be flat, or a ReVault with steel band would not be able to charge on it. It has to have an ‘arm’ that the puck can sit in, here’s some design inspiration to get you started

Design guidelines

• Download the template file of the watch with the puck to help you design your charging stand
• The stand needs to include a 52.5mm (diameter) x 2.4mm (depth) circular indentation to sit the puck into, and a hole somewhere for the cord to come out of.
• Dimensions of the watch are available here
• Modify it any way you want - add textures, change the shape, let your imagination run wild but be sure to leave the connections open

Contest guidelines

Upload your design to Sketchfab with the tag “ReVault”. You can enter as many times as you like, just tag each entry.

Contest closes June 5th, 2015 at 11:59pm EST. Winners will be announced by June 10th, 2015.

The prizes

One 128GB ReVault valued at $299 and a Sketchfab PRO license for one year valued at $120

We can’t wait to see what you create, so feel free to share your designs with us on social media @Sketchfab and @RevaultIO.

Good Luck!

Terms and Conditions

• No purchase necessary.
• By entering this competition, entrants will be deemed to have accepted and agreed to the conditions
• No cash or other alternative prizes available. The prize draw is not open to Sketchfab or ReVault employees or their families.
• The promoters decision is final – in case of dispute, no correspondence will be entered into.
• Winning entries will be documented and may be used for promotional purposes.
• Contestants models must be uploaded to Sketchfab and tagged #ReVault to be considered.
• Winners retain all Intellectual Property as per Sketchfab standard terms and conditions.
• Winners and winning entries may be required to take part in any publicity resulting from this competition.
• Winners design may be manufactured and sold by ReVault.
• The winner will be contacted by June 10th, 2015.
• The ReVault is planned to be shipped in January 2016.
• Promoter: Sketchfab, Suite 504, 900 Broadway, New York, NY, USA, 10013.

If you’re an Occulus fan like we are, you may well want to meet Palmer Luckey. While we can’t give you that, you can now meet him virtually in your DK2. Read all about it on reddit.

Other cool embeds:

• Space fans, check out these reddit users who put together an awesome composite of the bright spots on Ceres, based off NASA images taken in a fly-by and puzzling scientists and fans alike. NASA has even asked people to vote on what the bright spots might be. What do you think?

• The popular obstacle course race Warrior Dash has been sharing interactive views of the obstacles to help competitors train in advance.

• Fastcodesign wrote about how 3D mapping could help save coral reefs by tracking changes over time.

• The Academy of Fine Art in Madrid is using drones to study historical artifacts and structures like the giant Javier Manterola bridge in Cadiz that are too inaccesible to study any other way.

• Lastly, it’s fitting to see the Parrot Flower Power sensor pop up. It tracks a plant’s needs and sends alerts to your smartphone, which should help our newest plant at the NYC office. ;-)

Here are some nice embeds from crowdfunding campaigns:

• Auto-backup your files on-the-go with Revault. It’s a smartwatch with a wearable wireless storage that allows you to securely access and sync all your files across all your devices without an internet connection. Love the watch? Enter our contest!

• MONO glasses are affordable, custom-made, and 3D printed glasses. Its no screw, no hinge, and ultra-light one monolithic frame fits to everyone. Four days left to preorder yours on Indiegogo!

• The OFFBITS are build-it-yourself robots made of up-cycled components. Connect the bots and create your own designs! They just closed a successful Kickstarter campaign.

3DSlash, the fast and fun 3D modeling software has just added an option to publish straight to Sketchfab so you can edit your model and share it.

It’s as easy as building with cubes on 3DSlash. Just register an account with Sketchfab and get your API key. Then simply create your model and use the Sketchfab option to publish and share with the world.

Enjoy!

Natalia

There’s a lot you can do with the Viewer API, but it can be a bit overwhelming at first glance, especially if you have no experience in JavaScript. I’m certainly no expert, but I’ll go through an introduction and a simple example to help get your feet wet.

Introduction

The Viewer API is a tool to programmatically load and manipulate an embedded Sketchfab model. Uses can be as simple as loading a model ‘on the fly’, or as complex as custom camera animations, manipulating objects in the scene, and syncing a viewer over the Internet.

Prepare your site

To use the API, you’ll need to insert it somewhere on your page. It should be downloaded or hotlinked. For example:

<script src="sketchfab-viewer-1.0.0.js"></script>

<iframe src="" id="api-frame"></iframe>

Add your script

Add your empty iframe and the API link, as above.

<body>
  <p>This iframe was loaded by the Viewer API!</p>
  <!-- Your emptry iframe with some extra attributes -->
  <iframe src="" id="api-frame" allowfullscreen mozallowfullscreen="true" webkitallowfullscreen="true" width="400px" height="300px">
  <!-- The API -->
  <script src="https://d2f25wgezub9nf.cloudfront.net/api/sketchfab-viewer-1.0.0.js"></script>

Declare some variables:

• the iframe itself (document.getElementById())
• API version number
• ID of the model you want to load
• Sketchfab API client object.

<!-- Your new script -->
  <script type="text/javascript">
    // The iframe
    var iframe = document.getElementById( 'api-frame' );
    // API version
    var version = '1.0.0';
    // Model to load
    var urlid = 'e9e66978d4a248e2b0c4fdbb9912a573';
    // Sketchfab API client object
    var client = new Sketchfab( version, iframe );

Then, we’re ready to use the API. So, we initialize the API client, give it the model ID, and tell it to start immediately.

    // Initialize the API
    client.init( urlid, {
      // API is ready to use. You can interact with the viewer using the api object passed to the success function
      success: function onSuccess( api ){
        // Start the viewer immediately
        api.start();
      },
      // If initialization fails, throw an error
      error: function onError() {
        console.log( 'Viewer error' );
      }
    } );
  </script>
</body>

This is as simple as it gets. When the page loads, the API initializes and the model defined by urlid will be loaded in the iframe #api-frame. Obviously, this is pretty worthless because you can just embed a model as you normally would. Things get more interesting when you need to handle multiple models at once.

And here’s the result:

Build a model gallery

If you’re not familiar with our Playlists feature, check it out. It’s a great way to quickly embed a group of models. However, if you want to have a custom GUI and style, you can build it on top of the Viewer API. For this example, we’ll just have a few models and add a button to load each one.

First, the main HTML. It’s an empty iframe, just like before, plus 3 buttons. Note that each button has a unique id. They are wrapped up in some divs, just to make styling things easier later on. We also add the API like before.

<!-- Some divs to wrap the model iframes and three buttons -->
<body>
    <div class="wrapper">
        <iframe src="" id="api-frame" allowfullscreen mozallowfullscreen="true" webkitallowfullscreen="true" width="400px" height="300px"></iframe>
        <div class="buttons">
            <button id="blueButton">Blue</button>
            <button id="orangeButton">Orange</button>
            <button id="redButton">Red</button>
        </div>
    </div>
    <!-- The API -->
    <script src="https://d2f25wgezub9nf.cloudfront.net/api/sketchfab-viewer-1.0.0.js"></script>

Next, your JavaScript. This is very similar to the first example, but now we have three different model IDs. Then we declare three variables to represent the buttons (document.getElementById() again). I’m also declaring error and success here, instead of inside the initialization options. The effect is the same, but it’s a bit easier to read.

<!-- Your new script -->
    <script>
        // Three models to load
        var blueModel = 'e9e66978d4a248e2b0c4fdbb9912a573',
            orangeModel = '6d87d624ddf94e08b4301115b6a2cb8f',
            redModel = '2853267156ba442985036e6e0d4288df',
            // Three buttons
            blueButton = document.getElementById( 'blueButton' ),
            orangeButton = document.getElementById( 'orangeButton' ),
            redButton = document.getElementById( 'redButton' ),
            // API version
            version = '1.0.0',
            // The iframe
            iframe = document.getElementById( 'api-frame' ),
            // Sketchfab API client object
            client = new Sketchfab( version, iframe ),
            // If initialization fails, throw an error
            error = function () {
                console.error( 'Sketchfab API Error!' );
            },
            // If initilization succeeds, start the model immediately
            success = function( api ) {
                api.start();
            };

Now, instead of simply initializing the API immediately, we create a function called loadModel that does the same thing. It takes two arguments, the client and a model urlid, and uses them to initialize the API. This way, we can re-use the function over and over again with different models. You can also add all kinds of embed options here, like Autospin, Autostart, hiding UI elements, etc.

        // A function to load a model
        function loadModel( client, urlid ) {
            console.log( 'loading a model' );
            client.init( urlid, {
                success: success,
                error: error,
                /* This is where you can add additional options like Autospin */
                autospin: 0.5
            });
        }

Finally, we need to tell the buttons to run the loadModel function when they are clicked. We do this with addEventListener().

        // Listen for click events on the buttons
        blueButton.addEventListener( 'click', function() {
            loadModel( client, blueModel );
        });
        orangeButton.addEventListener( 'click', function() {
            loadModel( client, orangeModel );
        });
        redButton.addEventListener( 'click', function() {
            loadModel( client, redModel );
        });
    </script>

And the result!

I’m using some CSS to define button styles and wrap everything with a maximum width. You can get the whole HTML file for this example here. I hope it will be helpful for someone! :)

- James

On of our community members, Melissa Ng, whose repertoire normally consists of lacy dreamer masks, just completed an incredible project creating five, full color life-like masks for JiHAE’s It Just Feels music video. The video stars JiHAE, The Walking Dead’s Norman Reedus and was directed by Agnieszka Wojtowicz-Vosloo.

Take a closer look at the masks through her annotations:

Melissa describes how she accomplished this seemingly impossible feat in just three days on her blog, so read on for the story involving Blender, Sketchfab, Shapeways and some sleepless nights.

Congratulations on an amazing project Melissa!

In Art Spotlight, we invite Sketchfab artists to talk about one of their designs.

About Me

Hey folks, my name is Justin and I’d like to show you my process for creating the “JP Mech”. I recently revisited the project with the Physically Based Rendering workflow. 3dsMax, Photoshop and Substance Designer were used to create it.

So, on with the show!

Project Overview

This project started out as an academic project while I was studying at the Guildhall at Southern Methodist University, and after graduation I decided it needed some more attention.

Concept by Jake Parker

I began by making the close-to-final low poly mesh, which I kept intact while creating the high poly mesh inside of an Edit Poly modifier. After that, I optimized the mesh to its final state.

I baked out an Ambient Occlusion, Normal, and Diffuse map out of 3dsMax. The Diffuse map was simply a color ID key so I can separate materials easily inside Substance Designer. The AO and Normal serve some new and interesting functions inside of SD, too.

PBR Process

Within Substance Designer I used the baked maps from 3dsMax and SD’s procedural texturing nodes to create the different materials. I paid attention to each material separately, to make sure both the material was realistic, yet also looked good. Labels and decals were added with separate maps within the materials.

Here’s what the top layer of the Substance looks like, all of the other materials have similar graphs inside them, albeit a bit more complicated. The materials are properly applied to the mesh using the color ID key mentioned earlier.

After all that, here are the baked maps. SD is very smart and versatile when it comes to combining maps. It’s definitely an integral part of my workflow.

Final Prep

I did a quick pose to match the concept using some linking of pieces inside 3dsMax. A ground plane of some sort was necessary too. I then exported the meshes, grabbed the appropriate textures and uploaded to Sketchfab. I also brought the mesh into Unreal Engine 4 for beauty shots.

Sketchfab

Sketchfab’s interface makes it easy to set up a scene with PBR materials, and with cast shadows and custom lighting, it made the model pop even more. I love being able to display a project like this.

JP Mech (PBR) by Justin Hrala on Sketchfab

Acknowledgements

I need to thank one of my SMU Guildhall professors, Boris Fisher, for suggesting I take on this project and for his feedback that I finally implemented to get this to where it is. Also, one of my fellow 3D artists, Ricardo Orellana, convinced me to rig it and match the concept pose, which really made it shine. And one last note, it turns out that this concept is from an independent film called Redcoat, directed by Kohl Glass.

Thanks for reading!

Thanks Justin!

See more of Justin’s work on his Sketchfab profile and on his personal website on www.justinhrala.com.

- Bart

I spent last week in London at 3D Printshow. With the help of 5 awesome community volunteers, we 3D scanned and printed over 200 people in three days. Thanks Andy, Claudio, Derek, James and Jan!

Here’s a quick photo overview of the event and the community meetup. Click on the photos to follow the story.

Would you like to have a Sketchfab community meetup in your area? Get in touch with me and I’ll help you make it happen!

- Bart