How to Quickly Share 3D Models in Altspace
Want to quickly share a 3D model in Altspace without having to create a Template or Kit? Using gLTFs you can bring 3D models into Altspace within seconds.
What You Will Need
- Worlds Beta and Early Access enabled — Sign into altvr.com and verify that Worlds Beta is toggled on for your account on your profile. You’ll need Early Access toggled on as well, otherwise you won’t see the option to spawn gLTFs in the World Editor.
- World where you have World Editor — could be your homespace but I recommend using a separate World so you don’t lock yourself out of your homespace.
Place an Avocado
Copy this URL to your clipboard:
In Altspace, open World Editor > Altspace > Basics and click GLTF.
Click on the text field and then click paste on the virtual keyboard or CTRL+V on your physical keyboard.
Click confirm and then you should see an avocado in front of you.
glTFs may not come with colliders so you will have to click the Object in the present objects list to be able to manipulate it.
That’s it! I scaled it up a bit so I can see the glorious details.
Upload a 3D Model to Altspace
While you can use any URL to a publicly accessible “.glb” file, people don’t usually have their 3D models in that format and hosted in the cloud. It’s more common to have a zip file containing folder of glTF files like what you get when you download a model from Sketchfab. Altspace lets you make your own .glb files and hosts them for you so you can easily share them in Altspace.
Navigate to my low poly picnic table and click Download 3D Model. You’ll need to sign in with an account.
Download the Autoconverted format (glTF) version and extract the contents. You’ll get a folder with two files.
Navigate to the More > Models page.
Click Create and fill in the name.
Drag and drop all the files at once to the glTF Maker box.
After processing, your browser should save a scene.glb file to your downloads folder. This could really fast or upwards of 30–60secs depending on the number of files and the total filesize. If you didn’t get all the files, just try again and you should get a new .glb file.
Click on Choose File under the glTF field and find scene.glb in your downloads folder. You can also drag scene.glb directly to Choose File in most cases.
Click Create Model.
Click Copy to Clipboard and place it like you did the avocado.
Limitations
- Try to keep the model under 100,000 polygons. We’ve seen large models prevent a World from loading.
- Use sparingly. The performance impact of a model loaded this way.
- Only works with glTFs (.glb) for now but you can always use programs like Blender to convert models from other formats like .fbx to glTF.
- This feature is in Early Access so expect some bugs.
FAQ
- I don’t see More > Models or World Editor > Altspace > Basics > gLTF? Make sure you have Worlds Beta and Early Access enabled. Then refresh the page or restart Altspace.
- I don’t see anything when I try to place the model? Altspace probably couldn’t load the model. Verify that you can place the sample avocado, read up on the limitations, and check filesizes and polycounts. Try different models.
- I can’t enter my World after placing a glTF? Find your World on the Worlds > My Worlds page, click Objects, find any potentially problematic glTF object(s)and delete them.
- How come my model it’s huge? Unlike Kit objects, we’re not able to normalizing the scale (yet) so models may come in the wrong scale. Find the object in the present objects list and edit the scale.
- How come my model has a weird name? The default name is (currently) based on the .glb filename. You can override this name by finding the object in the present objects list and editing the name.
- How come my model has no collision? Collision is not yet supported. Still good for showing off some models quickly.
