Weekly Tech Review – Week 5 Sketchfab – publishing 3D scans

Sketchfab

Overview:

After taking all of our wonderful 3D images of the Porthcurno carrier pigeon last week, we needed somewhere to publish and share them – so this week we will be reviewing Sketchfab. Sketchfab is a platform where you can publish, share and discover 3D content. There are over 1.5 million scenes with a community of over 1 million creators you can follow, making Sketchfab the largest platform for immersive and interactive 3D. As with most of our reviews, this is a free platform, where there is no cost to upload or access content.

Sketchfab is available as a desktop website and as a mobile app, so during this review, we will look at both of these iterations. Once we have finished sharing our 3D images, we will also have a look at some of the museums who use Sketchfab on a frequent basis.

What you need:

• An internet connection
• Either a computer or a smartphone
• If using a smartphone, you will need to download the free Sketchfab app (available for iOS and Android)

 Instructions:

Web:

1. Open your internet browser and go to the Sketchfab website: https://sketchfab.com
2. Create an account.
3. If you are using the Trnio app (reviewed last week) then you can select the scan and share directly to Sketchfab

Pros:

• Website: it is really clear how to upload scans into Sketchfab.
• Website: the editing options on the website are excellent (once you have managed to get your content on there). The ability to add extra lighting, backgrounds, and post-processing filters is superb, creating professional looking 3D models.
• We really liked the ability to share 3D scans online on the Sketchfab site, and also the ability to embed this model into our own website.

Cons:

• Mobile app: not very user-friendly. It is unclear how you import a scan to publish. We thought that we would be able to import 3D scans straight into Sketchfab, but it turns out that on the app you can only export scans to Sketchfab from the app that you used to create the scan. While the Trnio app supports this direct export into Sketchfab, Scann3D doesn’t and we found it impossible to transfer the 3D scans from the app into Sketchfab.

General feedback:

The website and the mobile app appear to fulfill different functions. The website is much better at uploading and editing the 3D scans, whereas the mobile app is more geared towards exploring 3D content that has already been published. So, if you want to publish your own scans, we recommend that you use the Sketchfab website.

The user journey is not particularly easy or intuitive. If Sketchfab were easier to use and integrated better with 3D scanning apps, then the overall experience and benefit to museums would be better. Once the content has been uploaded, Sketchfab provides a fantastic opportunity to become part of a 3D community online, alongside bigger museums such as the British Museum.

Sketchfab is not perfect, but at the moment it is the biggest and best platform available to publish and share 3D scans and models.

Score:

• Price – 5/5
• Ease of use- 3/5
• Quality of output – 4/5
• Potential for museums – 4.5/5

Overall score: 16.5

Next week:

Next week we will be exploring content from other museums from the Sketchfab website, with the mindset of a user rather than a publisher. We might even get the chance to use our favourite tech so far – our Google Cardboards!

Jenny Lee and Yiota Liopetriti