For those asking what's special about this - the design of the UI is pretty top notch. It "feels" great, works well on desktops and tablets, and has a great selection of content. I wrote it up for Wired if anyone wants more background: http://www.wired.com/design/2012/10/sketchfab-embedded-cad/
This is a great site with lots of interesting models, but I'm genuinely curious about how the Hacker News community is going to help you get into YC W13. What are you asking us to do? (I really don't mean to be snarky, I'm just not sure what you want here other than page views)
I think the YC app should have a crowdfunded question. "How many people have you convinced to buy your non-existent product based on a shiny video and peer hype?"
I guess general awareness among such a tech-savvy community can't be a bad thing tho... that's usually what early-stage startups lack to create traction at the beginning, don't you think?
https://tinkercad.com is another one that I have been using lately. It seems to be focused on editing more, but the community and library are quite good as well.
I'm always amazed at how well WebGL works - I used to think that 3D intensive applications would be one thing that would/could not be converted from desktop app to web app.
I've been using tinkercad for a few weeks and I absolutely love it. The editor is amazing.
I'm not really sure I see the point of the original post though, since it is just a viewer and not an editor. tinkercad's ability to import, edit, and export stl is extremely compelling.
Am I missing something? Grabcad while great does not have webgl based viewer like sketchfab. Also, it seems to be sketchfab supports wide number of formats.
I'm a bit confused. Is this a sharing site? Every model on the site can be viewed on the site, or embedded in another site, or the more technically adept can simply open up Firebug, see where the assets are on the servers and download them directly. This seems like a great way for digital artists to loose control over their creations, because there's no protections for them. Please illuminate what I'm not seeing here...
In my understanding, they are building a Dropbox/Trello/Deviantart hybrid specific to 3D Models. In my view they are coming up with an MVP that is somehow promising on these lines. How money will flow in [i.e., why power users would pay sketchfab instead of relying on the whole bunch of existing 3D library services] still looks to me a bit of a cryptical point, but they have probably yet to focus on this with some serious customer development.
You would not get the original model file which was used to export the vertices (skeleton rigs, animations, high poly geometry, high res textures). Also, even though its a slightly different problem space, any video game suffers from the same vulnerability.
(spin the model around until you're looking at the back of his head, watch how his face always looks like it's looking straight at you, i believe this is a known psychological effect but some quick googling didn't turn up any results)
Nice UX and some good sample content. I'd put in a warning, though, since when I clicked through to one of the models it hung Firefox. Probably a WebGL issue of some kind, but since I've got a high-end machine I wouldn't have expected that. People could click through to one of your 3D views not realizing that it might tank their browser and lose unsaved content in other tabs.
As an applicant myself to YC W13, and leveraging on a very related problem [D'oh! :)], I totally vouch for SketchFab. I showed it to most of my friends working in 3d as soon as it hit HN a while ago, and I always had positive feedback. I would use it myself if I worked in 3D design!
TeamUp - www.getteamup.com - likewise provides a WebGL preview of 3D assets, but is also paired to a realtime production renderer. Disclaimer: I work there.
