Export Workflow for External Viewer/Software

[threadbuilt]

I am curious if anyone is using Fusion successfully to interact with 3rd party viewers or software? I have been trying for a while now to export a fairly basic model to Sketchfab that takes advantage of the benefits of Fusion 360 i.e. decals, environmental settings, joints (or at least separate parts), animations and so forth. When interacting with the model within the Fusion 360 environment I couldn't be happier as it displays and works exactly like i envisioned. However once exporting to Sketchfab (or other interim programs to try and fix the missing elements) it pretty much takes me back to square one and I may as well design it in another program.

To elaborate on this a little; I am looking to model a simple product in Fusion that has a decal and if possible takes advantage of Sketchfabs latest upgrades (animation), however I would settle for a multi-part model with a decal. Reasons for this is my partner would like to display her product in a viewer on her website and by interchanging the decal I can iterate all of her products without having to model each one individually. I do not have access to many other CAD/3D modelling programs and am trying to avoid learning whole new ones such as Blender as I am quite happy with Fusion.

Any help, thoughts or experiences to share would be much appreciated.

[Phil.E]

To be clear about what you want: You need to export a Fusion model with a decal and are finding the export has no decal. Correct?

Unless you are consuming .f3d (native Fusion file) in Sketchfab, you would necessarily be exporting something like IGES, STEP or SAT. These file formats do not recognize native Fusion objects like decals.

Thanks,

[threadbuilt]

@Phil.E, You are correct. I have looked into this previously so am aware of this limitation and whilst my ultimate preference would obviously be able to do everything within Fusion 360 I know that this will not e possible for some time. Unless someone developed some add-ins or a full featured Sketchfab exporter. I am exporting in IGES and/or STEP and have tried a couple of other formats but these all lock down the geometry into one single model without an intermediary and of course I still do not have my decal.

So right now I am looking for advice/options on how I would get a model out of Fusion (as this is still my preferred tool) and then apply decals/relationships in post editing. I am hoping others have worked out a method to do this in limited steps, consistent results and without necessarily having to fork out for other platforms ($$). My ultimate intention is to have a Master file that contains the model and its associated files such as environment, then all I need to do is swap out the decal (which in this case is custom designed labels) when I want to upload it to sketchfab fro viewing. If this is untenable I understand however it seems so far that on the avenues I have tried I am on the cusp of succeeding but again I have limited experience with other software platforms and in understanding limitations of file formats. Currently I believe Sketchfab likes (or tolerates) zip files with an MTS file and all of the component files included so this is the one I am shooting for.

Again any guidance on the matter is very much appreciated.

Thanks.

[threadbuilt]

If anyone can suggest a workflow to get a model with decals and environment from fusion into sketchfab I'd appreciate a response.

Given the difficulties I imagine an intermediate platform or piece of software is required. At the moment I am open to any suggestion.

[TMC.Engineering]

Maybe you might not need to use sketchfad.  this looks like a promising alternative.

http://www.instructables.com/id/Embedding-a-Fusion-360-3D-model-in-your-Instructab/

[threadbuilt]

I had looked into this and believe me given the headache I am having trying to get it into Sketchfab it is still my preference. However my partner (whom the model is for) prefers Sketchfab for its ease of use (UI), its Facebook integration and as far as I'm told will display on any device whereas the A360 viewer (as per your link) requires WebGL which voids all manner of apple devices....again as far as I'm told.

Given how long I have been messing around with this though I am thinking that it might just have to be that way....

Thanks for the response Timm, I appreciate it!

[threadbuilt]

Okay, new development. I gave up and figured I'd go with the A360 viewer as it appears as though I have no other option. However to my dismay I have now found that this still does not support decals in a model from Fusion 360 (even using f3d). I am now left wondering what the point of applying decals in Fusion 360 is for; if you can only view it in Fusion 360 and not export it for refinement or viewing elsewhere, you might as well not bother. I am a little steamed up about this to say the least as from my perspective this looks as though it should be a fairly straightforward thing to resolve or shouldn't even have been an issue in the first instance.

As it stands I am going to have to give up on this until such time that Fusion evolves some more functionality or other programs support Fusion a little better to enable a workaround.

[TrippyLighting]

I admit not having spent too much time investigating what Import formats Sketchfab supports but I am 100% covinced you can do what you want to do if you're open to use other software s an intermediary step. THe vast majority of Exporters that support the SketchFab API are for Mesh or Subdivision Surface modelers.

I use Blender for Subdivision Modeling and Blender is very powerful FOSS (Free Open Source Software.)

You could export for example a STL file of your Geomerty from F360 and import it tino Blender. In Blender you then apply your Decal/Texture and export it from there to Sketchfab..

If you are willing to share at least a screenshot of your model from Fusion 360 including the decal we can continue the conversation and determie what the best approach is.

[threadbuilt]

Thank you for the offer of assistance, I really do appreciate any input on this matter. Like you said I am sure there is a somewhat simple way of managing this through a workflow to a separate program (although I would have preferred within Fusion naturally) but I have limited exposure to this type of modelling software other than Fusion and hence I could not make it work. Blender I am sure is extremely proficient however it reminds me too much of 3dsMax and that does my head in whenever I try and use it....... I do have a copy of Blender though and have been frantically watching YouTube for the past two weeks and trying out all avenues but i think I am just not right for this particular software.

I have attached an image of the file of what I am trying to achieve and as you can see it is a fairly basic model. I have also pasted a link to the suitable file formats for Sketchfab below for your reference:

https://help.sketchfab.com/hc/en-us/articles/202508396-3D-File-Formats

One caveat that I was looking for was a way to recreate this workflow consistently and simply as the intent was for my partner to use this model to display customised labels for her clients via a 3D Model viewer (plugins such as A360 or Sketchfab), hence the desire to get the decal displaying correctly. This could be done either on her website or by sending the 3D file to the client so that they can load it to a viewer themselves.

She is proficient in Illustrator/Photoshop so dream of dreams was to export the model and environment/UVMaps in a form that would allow her to overwrite or modify one key file without the need for me to revisit in Blender/Fusion/etc. each and every time. Again I might be daring to dream here so am not holding my breath, if i can at least replicate this through Blender consistently without taking up too much time then so be it that way.

My final solution was to screenshare through Fusion 360 itself but not sure how suitable this would be for some people who are not familiar with this sort of process.

Again any help on the matter is most appreciated and am happy to share files with you as it is not proprietary or anything, in fact I will probably upload it for anyone else to use at some point when I am happy with it.

[TrippyLighting]

Yes, go ahead and share your model. I'll see what I can do with it.

[TrippyLighting]

So I've looked at the model exported it as an .stl imported it into Blender. Then I realized that there are a lot of steps necessary to get this uploaded to Sketchfab that are not so easy to grasp for someone not familiar with the usual workflow in a software like Blender, which operates very differntly from Fusion 360.

On top of that the result IMHO will still be not even remotely as good as even a halfway decent still render. The reason is that Sketchfab is certainly cool for more complex models, but this lip balm model is not particularly complex. It's a slightly more sophisticated cylinder.

So I've tried my hand to see if with a little work one cannot create a more convincing still render right in Fusion 360 with the available tools.

Here are a few rendering tips that are easy to do:

1. Bevel your edges!!! There are no infintely sharp edges in nature or an the vast majority of manmade objects. The human visual senses are incredibly fine tuned to detect these subtle highlights that are created by small bevels/chamfers and radii. So I went ahead and put a small radius on about everything I could get a hold of. The most important objetcs of course are the ones that are the largest in the image and closest to the camera lens.

2. Put the object in some context. Perhaps a ground plane with a little bit of blurred reflection and to catch a shadow to enhance the 3D effect.

3. Not that I did much of this here, but igting is enormously important. I just used the grid light here.

4. focal blur to attract attention to the more interesting parts of the image. I used just a littel here. The Burnt Orchid logo looks blurred but that's a result o the decal being to low in resolution. Focal blurr should be used subtly.

5. Some post-pro. I simply used Pixelmaters Autoenhance.

All in all I find this much more interesting than the flat shaded stuff in Sketchfab. YMMV 😉

[threadbuilt]

Thanks, that most certainly looks better than what I can produce render wise. I haven't played around in that space a great deal as of yet so am fairly new to it and definitely don't have that artists eye...."I like what I like when I see it"....or something to those effects.

Unfortunately what I was hoping for was the ability for the model to be displayed/navigated in 3D so that prospective clients could view their label in its entirety. As i said before I think I am perhaps chasing a dream solution and perhaps for now some static renders will suffice....

Thanks again!!

[TrippyLighting]

Well, I am not sure I have an artists eye. There may be a little bit of talent but really whatever skills I have gained have been through hard work driven by passion.

Here is another render. The only thing I changed I gave the material for the cap and the toothed wheel a littel translucency which "feels" like sub surface scattering.

Before particularly the cap loked more like fully opaque painted metal.