WebFeature

Preparing a 3D model

A short brief for whoever exports the product. The Studio will open almost any valid .glb. What it cannot invent afterwards is structure you did not put in the file.

What the file has to be

• Export a binary .glb, not a .gltf with a folder of textures beside it.
• A ZIP of a self-contained glTF package is also accepted. A loose .gltf is not.
• 150 MB is the hard ceiling. Files above that are almost always an unreduced CAD export.

Keep the parts separate

Highlight, hide, fade and exploded view all act on named meshes. If the whole product is one mesh, those effects have nothing to grab. Hotspots and camera views still work — the visitor can turn the product around and you can still point at a spot — but we cannot pull a lens out of a housing that was never a separate object.

No software we could write will split a single mesh into the parts you meant. That has to happen in Blender, CAD, or whatever tool you model in, before export.

A useful check: the Model tab lists every part. If you see one mesh and a handful of empty groups, re-export with the components unjoined.

Decimate. Then decimate again

A presentation is loaded by a browser, including phones. CAD tessellation that looks fine on a workstation is usually far too dense.

• Prefer a lightweight mesh made for viewing, not the manufacturing solid.
• If the file is tens of megabytes of geometry with little texture, it is probably still the CAD tessellation. Reduce it.
• There is no magic “make it fast” button after upload.

We do not publish a triangle budget as a promise: devices vary. Lighter is always safer. The 150 MB file limit is a backstop, not a target.

The visitor downloads the file

A browser that draws the model has already fetched the bytes. Unpublish does not recall copies that were delivered. Domain restriction is not DRM. There is no encryption that keeps the mesh secret from the person looking at it.

Export something whose loss you can accept:

• Decimated display geometry, not the CAD master.
• No internals the customer should not see (PCB, springs, toolpaths).
• No manufacturing dimensions, tolerances, or hidden annotations.
• Not the STEP / IGES / SolidWorks source.

This is the same bargain every in-browser 3D viewer lives with. We will not describe the public page as copy protection.

Textures

• Embed them in the .glb as PNG or JPEG.
• About 2048×2048 is the useful ceiling. Memory follows pixel count, not JPEG size: one 4096×4096 image is 64 MB once decoded. Three of those approach 200 MB, and a browser may quietly refuse one of them.
• Do not use KTX2 / Basis. The viewer has no transcoder for it.
• Do not use Draco. Re-export uncompressed geometry.

Markers and deformation

A hotspot sits on a rigid surface. If a part is bent by a skeleton (skinning) or a morph target, the Studio refuses that placement.

Exploded view is translation only. Parts are not rotated or scaled apart.

Orientation, scale, names

• Most CAD exporters are Z-up. The Studio can stand the model upright (Model tab).
• Scale 1 keeps the exported size. Millimetres versus metres are both fine.
• Name the parts in the 3D tool. Those names become the tree in the Model tab.
• Only the default scene is used.

Replacing a model later

Part references are tied to the exact file they were placed on. Swap the .glb for one whose parts are named or ordered differently, and markers on the missing parts are lost. The Studio warns before it accepts the new file.

Checklist