Sketchup Blog - News and Notes from the Sketchup folks

Take your 3D with you

We've released a new feature in the Google 3D Warehouse that enables anyone to embed an interactive view of any 3D Warehouse model on a webpage or blog. Here's an example of how it looks on our blog:



Here's how it works:

You've probably seen these two buttons on a model's details page:


The "Link" button shows you the URL for the current page. The "Include" button expands to look like this:


If you've ever embedded a YouTube video on a web page, this should be familiar to you. You'll select the type of embed (a static image, a 3D view, or a view using the Google Earth plugin), copy the HTML, and paste it into your site. This Help Center article contains more details.

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22 comments :

Unknown said...

awesome feature, can't wait to use it in my blog.

Ankit Surti said...

nice feature..would be so good if you can view 3D interior scenes of architectural models. i.e perspectives, sections, etc. Hopefully you gise are working on that.

martoon said...

i tried to get my model to appear in tumblr, but not working

Davideo said...

I have tried this with a Sketchup model that I uploaded to the Warehouse, and although I chose the 3D view and copied the code, in my webpage it only gave me an image that linked back to the Warehouse page. But I did notice that on a model chosen at random out of the Warehouse (a chair), the Warehouse page offered a choice of image or 3D view - which my model's page did not. I used Sketchup 7. Is this a bug or am I missing something?

Davideo said...

Here's a link to my post on my efforts - it might tell something about why it did not work for me:

http://www.gomaya.com/glyph/archives/002579.html

Unknown said...

Suggestion: Pressing the button to activate the 3D window should not have to be done. Instead, a tiny 'rotate me' button could hover on the image until the user mouses over.

Davideo said...

Thanks Sitting Duck, but that is not my issue. The "rotate me" button never shows up on the embed in my page. Instead, it defaults to an image linked back to the warehouse. And while the image in the warehouse (for models that do work as embeds) shows 2 tabs, one for image, and one to see the 3D view on the warehouse page, my models do not show those tabs.

Unknown said...

Sorry Davideo, my post was meant as a feature suggestion for Google!

Paulene Angela said...

Wow that looks a great feature. Looking forward to having a go.
Thanks, P

Frank Taylor said...

I suggest you add the nav gadget to the embedded GE Plugin version. Some people are not naturally adept at using mouse/keyboard controls to maneuver in 3D in GE.

Unknown said...

My Google site won't let me post the 3D viewer.
I embed the 3D View html coding into the site at the very bottom of a page and I can even preview it with the html window, but as soon as I close the html window, a popup tells me that theres something wrong with either iframe, scripts or something or other and the offending tags are going to be removed.
I don't get it

Unknown said...

@Davideo,
There are no tabs for image or 3D.
Open the 3D warehouse.
Search your model and click to view your model's page.
At the bottom of the page, click on +Include.
You will now see "Use the code below to include this model in your website."

insert code here

and underneath you will see:

Type: Image 3D View

Clicking the different selection boxes cause different html to appear in the code box.

I don't know if that helps, but I certainly don't see any tabs.

Eloi Raiol said...

I really enjoyed, I am using in my blog.
Eloi Raiol

Anonymous said...

Hi Everyone,

Thanks for the comments! I'll try to respond to three of the issues I see here, but in the future, let's take the discussion to our group: http://groups.google.com/group/3dwh/topics?hl=en. It's a little easier to manage a discussion there :-)

First off, there are some models that still don't load properly in the Google Earth Plugin. We're looking at those issues and hope to resolve them soon. Please post links to 3D Warehouse models where there are problems - in the group please! - so we can look at specific examples.

Secondly, the embed functionality has a bit of smarts in it that will intelligently revert embed types depending upon what's available. So if you ask for a Google Earth Plugin embed for a non-geo model, you'll get a 3D View. If you ask for a 3D View for a model where for some reason we don't have the generated images (as in the example posted above), we'll revert to the image type.

Finally, some sites don't allow embedding via the IFRAME technique. Google Sites is an example. In this case, you'll need to create a Google Gadget to do the embed. I slapped something together that I'm happy to share in a thread on the group.

Oh, and yes, adding the nav controls is on my hit-list (thanks Frank!). We wanted to get something out and hear what folks had to say, then we plan on iterating.

Hope to see you all on our group!
mark

Davideo said...

My issues are solved, thanks to quick Google response. I also recommend that users go to the group.

Again, many thanks to Mark Limber for his help. This is a great tool for sharing and teaching 3D modeling.

Anonymous said...

the 3D view does not work from pages where the primary language is other than English, this may explain why it does not work at all. and it might be good for google where they can embed the code in any language.
I understand that it is a new skill, so I leave just as a good suggestion. ;)

Diego Torquemada said...

It would be nice to extend the functionality to include the rendering of mathematical surfaces, curves.

Unknown said...

i can't get my model to have a 3d view when i upload it, there's only a picture of it but it's still downloadable, how do i get a 3d view in google warehouse?

nalberto said...

I uploaded a very basic model (cube) with geolocation info. I was expecting to be able to use the 3d view using the include code (iframe) but it does not work.

Not sure why? Is there processing time before the 3d view can be seen. My model is definitely not complex. http://sketchup.google.com/3dwarehouse/details?mid=e7f6971595302741ac4a7b72987ba2fa&ct=mdsa

Not sure if i am doing something wrong. Just copying and pasting the code into a blank html file and putting onto a web server but it only show the image of the model and links back to the warehouse without any 3d view.

Help please.

Anonymous said...

Brennan:
Wait some time for processing the images.

Nalberto:
Are you sure that you are selecting the "3d view" option before that you copy the code from the 3D warehouse?

Mark said...

I am having the same problem; how do I get 3d view in google warehouse? The forum link that mark limber posted does not take me to the thread about this topic.

Edward said...

Great. I had a bit of a struggle finding the code as there was nothing at the 'bottom of the page'. Finally .. I clicked the 'Share' drop-down and saw it. Suppose I need another cuppa coffe. Anyhoo .. works great!