Sketchfab Revamps Its Platform To Become The SoundCloud Of 3D Files

Sketchfab just released the second version of its 3D platform. As a reminder, Sketchfab’s ultimate goal has always been to become a sort of SoundCloud for 3D models. On the website, you can upload, browse and embed 3D models from your browser. Yet, until now, the company first has been focused on building the foundation of Sketchfab and the web platform was neglected.

“We spent the first two years mostly working on the 3D technology,” co-founder and CEO Alban Denoyel told me. “So with the v2, we evolve from a simple 3D viewer to a true community platform, with a social layer on top of it.”

On the new website, you can find all the features that you would expect from a social platform. You can comment on 3D models, you can follow people to curate a newsfeed of 3D models and more. The entire browsing interface was redone as well. Categories, folders and tags are completely new. The upload process is easier. Finally, it’s a responsive website that will work on your phone, tablet or computer.

Just like YouTube, you can embed your 3D model on your website. You can see at the bottom of this post how an embed looks like.

In addition to today’s update, the company released some numbers. So far, 100,000 3D files have been uploaded to Sketchfab. While it’s tiny compared to YouTube, Flickr or SoundCloud, it’s a lot harder to build a 3D model compared to recording a video. Comparatively, it took four years and a half to get 100,000 files on Makerbot’s Thingiverse. Sketchfab raised $2.5 million to date.

Recently, the company partnered with Adobe to build a deep integration into Photoshop. Now, you can upload a 3D model directly from Photoshop without ever having to launch your browser. It will certainly boost Sketchfab’s growth.

Here’s an example of a Sketchfab embedded model: