Exporting 3D view for non 3D users
I was dealing with a client that wanted a 3D views of the products for people that has nothing to do with 3D and for webpages. As I realized there is a format called U3D which should be usable for this purposes, but then I discovered that Photoshop actually can open .OBJ and export is as a .PDF with 3D content to view in it. It would be really great if the Blender would have a possibility to export into some common file format that can show 3D data for people like customers and other.
8 Comments
So upon more reading around the web, it seems what you want 2 features.
<ol> <li>Export into Universal 3D file format. <li>Export as PDF with with the U3D file embedded. </ol> As of right now, you can: <ol> <li>use MeshLab to do Convert to U3D. (blender.stackexchange.com :: Converting to U3D) <li>use Adobe Acrobat Pro to embed a U3D file into a PDF file. </ol> Asking Blender to export to a universal 3D file format seems perfectly reasonable to me. But exporting to a PDF seems a little less reasonable since you would have no control over your the way you 3D object is presented in that PDF file. You might as well use Adobe Acrobat for that part.
* @LilacDogoo * yep, of course direct export to PDF wouldn't be that much desired as just some universal format that can be opened in some programs that aren't mainly used for 3D. But i guess there will be a lot of compromisses about quality of the model. So far I am using the Blender->OBJ->Photoshop->PDF but there is missing transparency, glossiness and other, it pretty much shows just textures or color.
Just use things like sketchfab.
if you're running windows 10 you can just double click an fbx or obj and it will open it in the built-in 3d file viewer that ships with windows. you'd be hard pressed to find a 3d file format more ubiquitous than obj or fbx.
It seems to me that you first need to do some research and determine if such a format already exists. If so, then a developer could probably implement an exporter to that format. If the format doesn't exist, then this is a much larger project that's probably not Blender-specific.
Well the customer want a PDF. They use it to their websites as well. For now Iam trying to understand materials and textures for these type of exports. For example gold material lost its glossiness in Photoshop and then was completely gone in the PDF... as I assume, the PDF shows only textures and not materials.
I think OBJ is a pretty common format already. Also there are a lot of free OBJ viewer apps out there already. Even some web-apps so your customers don't need to download an app at all to view these files.
Not only Photoshop can open obj files. Microsoft office can do the same. At least i'm sure that Powerpoint can open certain 3D files. If you want to check if it will work in Powerpoint you can open your exported file (obj and fbx works) in Paint3D. If it works in there, then you can sent the file to your client and let them import it in Powerpoints and what not. Most offices have Microsoft products running.