Congrats to Sketchfab for celebrating their nineth anniversary and 5 millionth member yesterday.
Sketchfab recently announced they host over a half million free 3D models for VR, AR, and other uses on their site in addition to the millions of paid and demo models.
As we reported a few months ago, Google Poly is shutting down and Sketchfab is among the leaders stepping in to support low poly VR and 3D models including improving their new Poly-to-Sketchfab tool to make the process easier for transferring and uploading.
Tilt Brush, Scaniverse, SiteScape, EveryPoint, Lume Pad, Looking Glass Portrait, Polycam and even Microsoft Teams. There are Sketchfab plugins for Unity, Cinema 4D, and Blender.
Last year, Sketchfab announced that cultural organizations could now dedicate their scand and models to the Public Domain using the Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication (CC0) license, encouraging more museums, heritage sites, archives, and other organizations to share their 3D data openly while adding these invaluable assets to the Public Domain for educators and schools to download, reuse, remix, and creatively explore ancient and modern cultural artifacts, objects, scenes, and experiences in VR and AR. The Smithsonian Institution was one of the early adopters, and examples include:
- Diving Deep into 3D with Underwater Malta
- 3D Technologies in the Art History Classroom
- OUR Shurijo: Rebuilding Shurijo Castle with Memories (seen also in AltspaceVR)
- How Studio Jester Blank Digitized Collections for Staatliche Museen zu Berlin
- Edinburgh Castle: Virtually Exploring Scotland’s Past
- Turku Museum Centre: Digitizing Finland’s Archaeological Finds
- DRONETEAM: Digitizing Lithuania’s Cultural Heritage
- LDGP: Digitizing Heritage in the Basque Country
- Luis Coya Aláez: Digitizing the Upper Palaeolithic in Oviedo
- Michel Hilbert: Recording Erzgebirge’s Cultural Heritage
- Three Ancient Egyptian Coffins at Harvard University
- Sedona Friends of the Forest Digitize History in Coconino National Forest
- Scanning The Horizon: 3D Collections of the Scottish Maritime Museum
- 3D Photogrammetry Used During Rescue Excavations Of Highway D11
- Digital Heritage and the Archaeology of Afro-Peruvian Slavery
Congrats to Sketchfab and their whole team and partners, and here is to many more years supporting educators and education. Thank you.
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