You can add sound to your 3D scenes on Sketchfab. Sound / audio is great to make your scene more immersive, especially in VR. You can adjust the volume, position sounds in space, and synchronize them with an animation.
The sound tools are available in 3D Settings.
- From your model, click Edit 3D Settings or add "/edit" to the end of any model URL.
- Select the Sound panel in the top left.
Supported sounds
Sketchfab currently supports MP3 files:
- Constant bit rate (CBR)
- Bit rate up to 320 Kbits/s
- Sampling rate up to 48 KHz
- File size up to 5 MB
By adding sound, you confirm that you comply with our Terms of service and that you do not violate someone else's copyright. Many websites offer collections of royalty-free or public domain sounds and music. For example:
- YouTube Audio Library
- SoundCloud Royalty Free Music
- Public Domain Recordings
- Archive.org Audio
- Free Music Archive
Account Limitations
The number of sound tracks you can add to your scene depends on your plan:
- Basic account: 1 sound track
- Plus account: up to 3 sound tracks
- Pro account: up to 5 sound tracks
- Premium account: up to 10 sound tracks
- Business and Enterprise account: up to 15 sound tracks
Adding sounds to your scene
To add sound to your scene, open your scene in the editor and go to the Sound tab.
To add your first sound track, click Add Sound.
In the popup, you can add a new sound track:
Managing sound tracks
Sound tracks have the following options:
- Loop: Enable this option to make the sound repeat over and over.
- 3D: Enable this options to make the sound positioned in space. When enabled, you can move the sound in the 3D viewport. You can also adjust the radius of the sound by making the sphere smaller or larger. Inside the sphere the volume is constant. Outside the sphere, the volume falls off. You can change the attenuation between Exponential and Linear. For reference, sound is spatialized with the HTML5 Web Audio API.
- Volume: Adjust the default volume of the sound.
- Sync animation: When the model is animated, this will make the sound to start/restart playing when the animation reaches the given time. If the model has multiple animations, synchronization is only supported on the first animation.
- Stick to closest geometry: When a model is animated and your sound is set to 3D, you can choose to make it stick to and follow the nearest object around the scene.
Click the clock icon to fill the time with the current time of the animation. Sound synchronization works best when the animation is playing at x1.0 speed.
Viewing scenes with sound
When you view a scene that has sound, you will hear the sounds added by the author. Depending on the platform, sound might be muted by default.
- Adjusting the volume: hover over the Sound icon, and adjust the volume slider
- Mute: click on the Sound icon. You can also press the M key to mute.
Compatibility
We are constantly working to improve the compatibility with a larger number of configurations. Refer to the following table to know which configurations are supported.
| Configuration | Ambient Sound | Sound synchronized with animation | 3D Sound |
| Google Chrome Desktop (v57+) | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Mozilla Firefox Desktop (v53+) | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Apple Safari Desktop (10.1+) | Yes* | Yes* | Yes* |
| Microsoft Edge (v38+) | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Google Chrome Android (v57+) | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Safari iOS (10.3+) | Yes† | No | No |
| Chromium Experimental VR Build (2016-08-29) | No | No | No |
| Mozilla Firefox Nightly (55.0a1+) | Yes | Yes | Yes |
Saving
Once you've made your adjustments, including position and orientation, be sure to update your model's thumbnail image and default position with Save View and/or save your changes with Save Settings. You can return to your model by clicking either the model's name or Exit.
Also see:
Comments
9 comments
When I add sounds sometimes I will lower the sounds very low but after a few loops of the track the volume will reset and play full blast. Is there a way to fix this or is it a known bug? I usually always use 3d sound for distances also but still keeping the volume low.
It can be a bit annoying and frightening hearing the sound suddenly increase full volume.
Thanks
@phantom-fox Hmm that's weird. Can you share a link to the model? What browser(s) have you tried?
Hi @James
Here is a link to my model
https://sketchfab.com/models/e12c0af39539458aba89e0d1f66bd744
Sometimes the sound will stay the same volume and sometimes it will suddenly go full volume and ignore the 3d spatial area after a while.
I have had it happen (and still happens) on another model I have also.
I use Microsoft edge as its my default browser,
I'm guessing its the browser causing the problem maybe,
I'm sure I'm possibly one of the few who use Microsoft edge as their default browser.
Thanks! We have a fix coming soon that's currently in review.
I can add an MP3 sound file and it starts to play so I can hear it. But once I click on save settings I get the following error message:
"Error
Errors while saving the following sounds:
.[object Object] :[object Object]
Contact the support team at support@skectchfab.com if you need help."
I've tried different sound files and different models and different browsers.
Sorry about that, we have a fix on the way!
For now, there is a workaround: whenever this happens you can go in the dropdown button next to the sound track in the editor, choose "Replace" in the menu and pick the sound file again. Then the save will work.
Thank you @James
This method work fine..
Hi team,
Is there a way to trigger a sound without an animation? Perhaps using some form of markdown on an annotation?
Perhaps this is a bug? I know that a single click when the model loads will trigger the audio track to start. But clicking again doesn't start the audio track again. However, if i let it play out, change tabs, and change back, when I click again I can make the audio track trigger again.
But I can't reasonably ask my audience to change tabs and change back (not least when they're viewing in a Facebook feed).
I've got a variety of models to which I want to attach multiple sound clips, triggered separately (versus concurrently), but right now the audio either plays before the model is even done loading, and even if I use preload so that the model is rendered, if the person didn't understand the audio on the first play-- they can't trigger it again.
And I know loop is the other main alternative, but I've been told the looping sound irritates my viewers and makes them stop exploring the model faster just to make it stop.
Thoughts?
I'm experiencing some problems with the relative volumes of my 3D sounds. Volume levels of the individual tracks appear to fluctuate. For example, all my 3D sounds will sound very loud when I first load my model. Then I mute (using the button in the SketchFab viewer), then unmute, and all of the sounds get faint (no other changes were made between mute and unmute, but there's an obvious change in volume).
Why would momentarily muting and unmuting change the volume of my sound effects? From my observations, I believe that the faint volumes is when all the 3D sound settings (volume, size, attenuation) are taken into account, and the louder initial occurrence seems to be a bug.
Also, sometimes after muting/unmuting I lose 3 out of 5 of my audio tracks. The other 2 are still audible, but three (water, mtn_chickadee3, and red_winged_blackbird) go silent. And then, inexplicably, will come back. I don't have good observations about what actions causes them to come back, but might be as simple as switching tabs in chrome, and coming back to the SketchFab tab.
One last observation, the "Tap/Click To Play Sounds" button on the model is inconsistent. Sometimes it appears, other times it does not. I don't know the expected behavior with this button, but thought I would include this observation here, in case it's a worthy clue.
Here's a link to my model: https://sketchfab.com/models/da606164a75b4dacafe8ee0e656eea81
I'm using macOS 10.14.6 and Chrome Version 80.0.3987.163 (Official Build) (64-bit).
Please advise.
Thank you,
-Nick
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