Facebook Now Allows Interactive Embeddable 3D Models From Sketchfab in Users’ Streams

February 27, 2015 by Heidi Milkert 3D Design 3D Software

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Probably one of the fastest growing platforms within the 3D modelling/printing space is that of Sketchfab. The company, which launched only about three years ago, has become the go to hub for quality 3D models. Sketchfab enables 3D artists to share their work in an interactive way, by offering up content in an easily embeddable, real-time 3D player.

Over the last three years, artists, businesses and 3D printing enthusiasts have been flocking to the platform. In fact, there are now well over 200,000 3D models available through the interactive platform, which supports 28 different file types for upload. While many 3D model repositories offer up images of the models from various perspectives, Sketchfab takes things up several notches. When a model is uploaded to Sketchfab, it is displayed as rich HTML5 content. Users browsing the model get more than just images. They can interact with the model with their finger or a mouse by rotating it a full 360 degrees in any direction, while also being able to quickly zoom in and out. The Sketchfab HTML 5 viewer is by far the most intuitive on the net, when it comes to viewing high resolution 3D models.

As the company seeks further growth, they have reached out to the world’s largest social media platform, Facebook, to see if they would support their incredible real-time 3D player within users’ streams. In a move which could help take both 3D modelling and printing mainstream, Facebook today has officially announced their support for Sketchfab’s embeddable models.

“With a small team, we’ve built something that is so good that Facebook wants to bring it to their 2bn users,” stated Alban Denoyel, Co-founder and CEO of Sketchfab. “We are proud to be one of the very few partners to provide rich HTML5 content on Facebook, and the first interactive format to be supported in the newsfeed.”

There are only a select few companies which Facebook has partnered with to support HTML5 embeddable content. The fact that this multi-billion dollar company has agreed to terms with Sketchfab on this integration, means a lot for the Sketchfab community and 3D communities in general. Users will now be able to simply post any Sketchfab model’s URL in their post window, and Facebook will automatically turn that URL into an the interactive Sketchfab viewer of that particular model.

In addition to being able to embed models within blogs and websites, designers will now be able to take full advantage of the world’s largest social media platform in their drive to share and sell a greater number of their creations. Popular models now have the opportunity to truly go ‘viral’ as users comment, like and share their favorites on their Facebook streams. It will be very interesting to see how this integration effects Sketchfab’s growth moving forward.

Are you a designer on Sketchfab? What are your thoughts on this news from Sketchfab? Let us know in the ‘Sketchfab now integrates into Facebook’ forum thread on 3DPB.com. Below you will find a fitting example of Sketchfab’s embeddable interactive 3D models: