During the last weeks, we’ve been working on a redesign of our viewer with the help of many beta testers. Our goals were to address design issues and improve the viewer on several levels:
- make the interface more user friendly, especially for new users
- make it look more modern,
- make it less distracting, and in the end, emphasize your models more.
We’ll go into all the details in this blogpost, but first here’s a quick overview of the changes:
(You can find the models that are featured in this video in this collection)
Focusing on your content
The redesigned interface is less intrusive and fades out completely when you move the camera or when an animation is playing. It lets you enjoy 3D models in their full glory.
When embedded, the viewer now also shows your avatar. A good opportunity for branding.
Responsive design
With this update, the viewer will also adapt better to different screen sizes. Whether you view models on mobile, in a small embed or on a large screen, the interface will adjust to your screen. Playing animations and navigating annotations is much easier on mobile now.
Help and keyboard shortcuts
The viewer now includes a Help screen with interesting info for both beginners and advanced users. For beginners, this screen has instructions for basic navigation and an emergency button to reset the camera. For advanced users, the help screen includes the full list of keyboard shortcuts that will let you access functions faster.
Frame-by-frame control for animations
When viewing animated models, you now have more control over playback. You can switch between time and frames, play the animation frame by frame at different speed and go to a specific time or frame.
Redesigned playlists
Along with the viewer, we’ve updated collection embeds (also known as playlists) to make them easier to navigate.
Collection: Draw these environments by Louise Lakey:
The same high-quality 3D engine
We only changed the interface and the viewer is still powered by the same high-quality 3D engine. As a reminder, the 3D engine supports Physically-based shading, animations, post-processing filters, real-time shadows, supersampling and works on mobile, desktop and virtual reality. Anything that was supported before will still be supported.
Want to know more?
Our Help Center has a dedicated section with information about our viewer, including a list of all the URL parameters you can use to further tweak its behaviour.
About the author
Maurice Svay
UX Designer at Sketchfab. Photography and 3D scanning enthusiast.
