Quick and dirty 3D Post trial

Work:

In order to share 3D content on Facebook the model has to be a glTF 2.0 file. (Actually it turns out it needs to be a binary encoded .GLB file, and it has to be under 3MB in size)

MAKING THE FILE

First things first: How do we make a .GLB file?  Most of our existing 3D content has been archived as an .OBJ file.

Step one) install Node.js 

Step two) install the obj2gltf conversion tool.

Enter the below command in Terminal (for osX) to install.

npm install -g obj2gltf

You may need to sudo for rights "sudo npm install -g obj2gltf "

Step three) Use the obj2gltf command to convert your file. 

Enter the below command in Terminal (for osX)

"-b" flag necessary to make a binary self contained file 

obj2gltf -i -b

Step four)  You're done. That command will create a .glb file in the same directory

Fixing the File

The first files I made didn't work. I found out why using the Facebook 3D Model Validation Tool. The .OBJs made using our Structure.IO Kit are WELL over the 3mb limit. 

The test .OBJ had over 200,000 triangles (29 MB) and the texture was uncompressed 4096 x 4096 (3.6 MB)

I used blender to decimate the mesh down to 10,000 Triangles (< 1 MB)

And I used photoshop to compress the .JPG to level 7 (1.3MB)

Then using the steps above produced a .GLB (2.4MB)

Getting it on Facebook

This part is pretty easy, still I made a video to document it:

You could also you the Open Graph to attach it to an HTML page. 

Finished result:

Results are embeddable using a iFrame

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Next Steps

• Find a Structure.io workflow that produces .glbs
• Work with Advertising / Newsrooms to use in practice
• Find out if animation and sound are possible
• Work with other file types
  • Try to get Big Red Cart model shared
  • Try to Sohail's "The Catch" share

Feedback

• 3D posts don't appear to work on Android, neither through chrome nor through the app