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I have watched a million Blender videos and been playing around heaps but I can not for the sake of me work out how to import a 3D Map (.obj) (From Drone Deploy) and output it to a HTML friendly web version.

Several of the videos said you could do this but I cannot work out how? Happy to pay someone to show me :-)

Cheers Jason Cole

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  • $\begingroup$ What and how it is not working? import an obj file into blender? Export to an obj file? Show the obj file in html and a browser? $\endgroup$
    – HikariTW
    Aug 23, 2019 at 6:41

4 Answers 4

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.obj can be imported directly by default (assuming it's the standard Wavefront format you're referring to, which it most likely is). File > Import > Wavefront (.obj). Presuming importing isn't your main problem though.

Blender doesn't have a built-in way to simply export to web, though. There are some (2 year old) plugins to convert models into web-ish formats such as .json, but then you need a web programmer to do anything useful with that. Really, the web doesn't have a direct/easy way to 'just' show 3D models. There are a number of competing services/technologies trying to solve that, but none of them are totally simple/direct.

If it's just a wireframe, that's simpler. if there's textures involved, the problem becomes an open-ended one of how much data do you want on your web viewer. Fancy Shaders?

Things like 'three.js' and webpages using 'WebGL' are low-level systems for web programmers, not immediately useful to artists/end users.

The least technical way available currently is to use one of the services that allow web pages to show models in their own web viewer browser component, such as SketchFab or Verge3D. Verge3D is a successor of sorts to the discontinued 'blend4web'. Others may be available.

In either case, there are some hoops to jump through. Each has its own process to get data out of Blender. Checking those services' documentation would likely be your quickest way forward. I have not used either myself and can't make any specific recommendations.

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  • $\begingroup$ Thanks heaps for your information. I had a look at a couple of the other programs but I think its a little but too user intensive for my customer. Can a 3D Model be opened in Photoshop 3D? I open the 3D Model but there is no texture, its just a single colour 3d map. is this possible? If it is I will start to look into how to do it this way. $\endgroup$
    – Jason Cole
    Aug 29, 2019 at 22:50
  • $\begingroup$ Exporting 3D models to Photoshop... the texturing not exporting is quite common, it depends what format you export. If you export as Wavefront .obj, Photoshop can read that but you need to ensure a .mtl material file is also exported. It comes down to a bit of trial-and-error repetition to get some (or as much as possible) of your Blender materials/textures to actually export. The .fbx exporter might be worth a shot there too, my cursory reading indicates photoshop can maybe import that type as well, and Fbx includes (some) material data. So does Photoshop let you save 3D for web? $\endgroup$
    – acro
    Aug 29, 2019 at 23:12
  • $\begingroup$ Meshalb was the answer, thanks so much, we can now open the 3d Model :-) $\endgroup$
    – Jason Cole
    Aug 30, 2019 at 21:13
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Meshalb was the answer, thanks so much, we can now open the 3d Model :-)

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  • $\begingroup$ Ahhh ok sorry about that. I loaded the 3D Mesh object from Drone Deploy and it came up fine in Meshlab. I am now working on how iot export it for web but the 3d model displays perfectly with this application. Thats all i can advise so far. As i work out more I will update this post. $\endgroup$
    – Jason Cole
    Aug 31, 2019 at 0:19
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I used glTF one click export plugin by Michel Anders. It worked great and was easy to install:

  • Download the zip from GitHub.
  • Open Blender Preferences -> Add-ons, click Install and select the webgloneclick.zip.
  • From File -> Export menu select "glTF one click" and create a new folder for the results.

Note that the result consists of multiple files, so you will have to upload the result folder to a web server to be able to view it. Otherwise web browsers deny access to the local files from JavaScript and the 3D model will not load.

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There's slightly new solution to this problem at https://meshpage.org/gltf_to_zip.php

It reads gltf2.0 files and outputs html5 zip files.

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