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Animations

    The animation feature allows you to upload animated 3D files and have them play on Sketchfab. For information on editing and managing animation settings after uploading, see Animation Settings.

    Uploading animation files

    Uploading animated 3D files isn’t different from uploading regular 3D files. If you need help exporting animation, refer to Exporting, or check your software documentation.

    Animation is currently supported for FBX, Blender (.blend), Alembic (.abc), glTF, and Mimesys Q3D formats.

    We support:

    • Solid animation: translation, scale, rotation
    • Skeleton-based animation: model rigged with bones
    • Morph targets: transformed vertices
    We only support separate FBX animation files with a specific file structure. We do not support meta/controller files, or point caches.

    Exporting

    In general, you can export your scene as FBX with baked animations (or BLEND for Blender). However, FBX export options will be different across software. Here are some software-specific tutorials from our community:

    For more, check out the Animation Forum Thread.

    Viewing animated 3D models

    If a model has animations, you can see the animation icon in the top-right corner of each model in the gallery page:

    3d_animation_model.png

    When viewing the model page or embedded model, you will see a timeline and animation menus.

    For details, see Interface and Options.

    Sketchfab 3d model viewer animation timeline

    Editing animated 3D models

    You cannot edit or create animations on Sketchfab, but you can edit some animation properties. See Animation Settings.

    Annotations + Animation

    Annotations are compatible with animations. They will stick to and follow the model.

    Multi-FBX Support

    We also support the usecase where a scene is split into several FBX files where one file contains the model and the others define animations.

    This feature is still experimental.

    The feature is enabled after a .zip/.rar/.7z upload when the archive has the following structure:

    [filename].zip:
        - [file_with_model].fbx
        - animations/
            - [file_with_animation_1].fbx
            - [file_with_animation_2].fbx
            ...

    There is no restriction on the animation filenames, but the filename will define the animation name on Sketchfab. They can be renamed in 3D Settings later.

    Timeframe (Stop Motion)

    This feature is still experimental. See Limitations.

    It's possible to use multiple model files to create a stop motion animation. You just need to include all the models and a special "sketchfab.timeframe" text file.

    For a more detailed tutorial, visit the blog.

    In this example, there are 3 models:

    • sphere.obj
    • cube.obj
    • cylinder.obj

    Duration

    Specify a duration (in seconds) for each model, in order:

    0.5 sphere.obj
0.5 cube.obj
0.5 cylinder.obj

    You can download this example file here, and open it in any plain text editor.

    Upload them all together, and here's the result:

    Composition

    You can combine multiple files in a single frame using syntax like this:

    0.5 sphere.obj+cube.obj

    Transformation

    You can perform translation, rotation, and scale transformations objects using syntax like this:

    0.5 model.obj@t=tx,ty,tz@r=rx,ry,rz@s=sx,sy,sz
    • @t= to specify a translation followed by the vector components separated by commas, with no extra space
    • @r= to specify a rotation followed by rotation angles (in degrees)
    • @s= to specify a scale followed by either a single value for uniform scale or a scale vector
    • @m=m1,m2,...,m16 to specific a full 4x4 matrix transform

    Limitations

    • All of the models must be loaded in the same scene simultaneously, so it can hurt performance if you have many frames with complex models.
    • You can use any combination of supported formats, but materials may not be processed correctly if they are not all the same.
    • Blender and GLB/glTF formats are not supported in timeframes.
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    James
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