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A short guide on turning your 3D scans into game-ready assets for use in Unreal Engine 5. Using your 3D scans as videogame assets is an easy way to create a realistic game environment with beautiful graphics. This process has been made even easier thanks to the introduction of Nanites in UE5, a new virtualized geometry system, which eliminates the need to worry about 3D models with high polygon counts. In this article, we'll walk you through the process of importing and staging your models in UE5 as well as the (optional) process of reducing your scan's file size in Blender. We hope that after you finish reading, you'll see how importing your scans into Unreal is an incredibly simple process. If you have not already installed Unreal, you can download it from their website here. Let's begin! Unreal Engine's Nanites Explained Introduced with the launch of UE5, nanites allow users to render very high poly meshes in their games without a big performance cost. How does Unreal's new virtualized geometry system work? According to the official Unreal Engine 5 Documentation: During import — meshes are analyzed and broken down into hierarchical clusters of triangle groups. During rendering — clusters are swapped on the fly at varying levels of detail based on the camera view, and connect perfectly without cracks to neighboring clusters within the same object. Data is streamed in on demand so that only visible detail needs to reside in memory. This essentially means you can now use high-poly meshes without worrying about using up too much memory. It is now possible to import your scans as they are to Unreal without going to the trouble of using a tool like Blender to lower the poly count. However, as Unreal mentions in their documentation, it should be noted that larger file sizes will take up more disk space, and may make it difficult to upload and share your game with collaborators and users. If disk space is a concern for you, check out our article Lowering 3D Scan Poly Count in Blender 3.0 before moving on to the instructional portion of this post. The linked article will help you reduce the size of your 3D scan files while maintaining the majority of their quality and detail. Even with the reduced file size, Unreal recommends that you enable nanites for all meshes to ensure optimum performance of your game. Importing And Staging Your 3D Scans In UE5 Now that we've explored nanites and how they work, let's import our first 3D scan into Unreal Engine 5! Start by navigating down to the Content Drawer in the lower right of your screen. You can use hotkeys Ctrl + Space to open it. Select the folder you'd like to place your model in and right-click it to bring up the folder options. Select Add/Import Content > Import/Game/[YourGame'sName] > Select both the mesh and its .png texture file and import. Once your files are selected for import, you will get to customize your import settings for the mesh. To keep things simple in this tutorial, we recommend following our settings pictured to the right. Be sure "Build Nanite" under Mesh is checked to enable nanites on your scan, even if your mesh is already low poly to ensure optimum performance. After import, your screen should resemble the picture below. One Default Material, one Mesh, and one Texture. To place your 3D scan mesh in your scene, simply click and drag the mesh from the Content Drawer into your 3D Viewport. If you'd like to place the object on something specific, like the table in this example, hover the object over the table in the viewport before letting it go. It should snap to the table's surface automatically. To adjust the position, rotation, and scale of your mesh in your 3D viewport, you can select the Move, Rotate, and Scale icons shown in the picture below. Be sure to only use the middle handle on the Scale Gizmo (this will highlight the whole gizmo yellow) if you'd like your model to be scaled uniformly (pictured below). Finally, you can apply texture to your model by clicking and dragging the .png Texture you imported directly onto your model in the 3D viewport. Your model will turn gray for a few moments before the texture appears. This action will automatically generate a new editable Material in the Content Drawer as shown below. Simply double-click on the new material in the Content Drawer if you would like to make any edits to it. Thanks to Unreal's nanite technology, building and rendering highly detailed scenes with your 3D scans is easier than ever! By using 3D scans to build out your game's environment, you're not only creating scenes with stunning graphics, but you're also saving all the time you would have spent modeling the same thing by hand. Have you tried using your scans in Unreal Engine yet? Was this blog post helpful? Consider subscribing in the footer below for updates on our future posts!

An introductory tutorial on quickly creating free custom textures for your 3D scans. Before: After: While the majority of 3D scanners have the ability to capture a high-quality texture with your scan, there may be scenarios where you'd like to replace parts or all of your model's texture with a new one. For example, some textures, such as shiny or transparent ones, don't play well with scanners. You may need to cover such items in chalk spray before scanning, preventing the scanner's ability to capture texture. Other times, you may just want to experiment with alternate color and material palates on your scan. Whatever your reason, the process of creating a new texture from scratch is relatively simple and can be completed many times over--resulting in a wide array of options! In this tutorial, we'll be preparing a 3D scan in Blender with material IDs and then creating a custom texture for our scan in Quixel Mixer. If you'd rather make small adjustments to your scan's texture without creating a new one, check out Editing Materials on 3D Scans. Step #1 - Preparing Your 3D Scan With Material IDs Before we texture our scan, we'll want to break it into individual sections with Material IDs. Material IDs allow us to assign different materials to each part of our scan. In today's example, we'll make three material IDs for our bracelet scan-- one for the silver band, one for the turquoise stone, and one for the backside of the stone (while this part of the bracelet is the same color as the band, it is slightly rougher, so we'll want it to have its own material with a different roughness value to reflect that). To start the process of creating your material IDs, import your 3D scan to Blender and navigate to the Material Properties tab. Click the "+" icon to add a new material slot, then click "New" to create a new material. Name your new material after the part of your scan you'd like to have its own material. In our bracelet example, we'll name our new material "stone" since we want our turquoise stone to have different material properties than the rest of our bracelet. Next, navigate down to "Base Color" on the new material and set it to a bright color you can easily see and differentiate from other colors on the scan. The specific color you choose doesn't actually matter-- it won't be seen in your final results. The bright color is only there to temporarily mark this particular section of your model as its own unique material! Pictured below: Adding new material > Creating new material > Naming and setting color of new material In this next step, we're going to assign our new "stone" material to the stone part of our 3D scan. To start, let's tab into Edit Mode and change our selection tool to Select Circle (pictured below). The Select Circle will make it easier to quickly select the faces of our model that represent the stone. Before you begin selecting, make sure the selection mode is set to Face Select (pictured below). To start your selection, simply drag the select circle over the stone section of the 3D model (be sure to hold 'Shift' if you are including multiple areas in your selection). If you mistakenly include the wrong faces in your selection, hold the Ctrl button and go back over them with the Select Circle to remove them. If you accidentally lose your selection by clicking off the model, just undo your last action and it will bring your previous selection back. Once we have selected the entire stone area on our example bracelet, we'll need to make sure our "stone" material is selected in the Material Properties tab. Then we'll click "Assign" (pictured left) to assign the stone material to the bracelet. If the assignment was successful, the model should resemble the screenshot below. If the model shows no color at all, you may need to make sure your viewport shading is set to Material Preview (hotkey: z, 2). You may notice in this example the edges of our material ID selection look jagged. If you want yours to have smoother edges it is best practice to make sure your model has clean topology first and retopologize it! Repeat the steps above to create a new material ID for each section. You may do this as many times as needed to create different material sections on your model. Be sure to name them after the section of your model they represent--It will help keep you organized later when you are assigning materials to them in Quixel Mixer. When all material IDs have been created and assigned, your model is ready for texturing in Mixer! Go to File > Export > Obj to export your model (pictured below). Step #2 - Creating A Custom Texture in Quixel Mixer Now that our 3D scan has been prepped with material IDs in Blender, we can create our custom texture! In Quixel Mixer, click New Mix and choose your mix's name and preferred working resolution. To import your model, go to Setup>Type> and choose Custom Model (pictured below). In the pop-up, select the .obj you just exported from Blender. After your model has been imported into Mixer, switch over to the Layers tab. You'll see that each material ID you created in Blender is listed under Target Texture Sets-- one of the important reasons for giving them descriptive names back when we created them in Blender! Let's apply a custom texture to the band of the bracelet. We named this part "base." Make sure "base" is the only item checked under Target Texture Sets. Then click on Add Decal/Atlas Layer (the leaf-shaped icon under the Layers tab pictured below) to begin our search for a Surface material. Clicking on Add Decal/Atlas Layer will switch you from the Viewport tab to the Local Library tab (shown below). As you can see in the image above, we have quite a few Surfaces in our Local Library! If this is your first time using Mixer, you may not have any items in your Local Library-- don't worry, we'll go over how to download assets from the Online tab in the next step! The type of asset we are using to texture our model in this example is called a Surface. Mixer has many different types of assets. To make your browsing easier, you can filter your search for Surfaces in the Type Menu under the search bar. In our Local Library, we already have the perfect silver-colored Surface downloaded for our bracelet's band (pictured below). To apply this Surface to our "base" texture set, all we need to do is double click it. As you can see in the screenshot below, the silver material was successfully applied to only the band of our bracelet-- the area we assigned the "base" material ID. Perfect! If you click on the silver Surface material now displayed under our Layer Set 1, you can see its various properties will display on the right side of the screen. Each property is editable to help you achieve a fully custom texture. Next, we'll add a material to the stone of our bracelet. Under the Layers Tab, click Add Layer Set (the stack icon pictured below) to create a new layer for the stone independent of the band. With Layer Set 2 selected, make sure the only item checked under Target Texture Sets is "stone." Having other texture sets selected will cause every material used in this layer set to be applied to anything that is selected. Let's look at how to download Surface materials from the Online tab. Assets from the Online tab will appear in your Local Library tab once downloaded. Navigate over to the Online tab and make sure the asset type is set to Surface under the search bar. If you have a specific material in mind you can type it directly into the search bar (for example "wood" or "marble"). If you'd like to browse all available Surfaces, you can search through the categories listed just below the type menu under the search bar. Once you've found a surface material you like double-click it and press "download" to bring it into your Local Library. From your Local Library tab, you can apply the Surface to your chosen Layer Set the same way we applied the last one--by double-clicking it! Easy. To see the results just tab back over to the Viewport. As you can see in this example, the Verde Guatemala surface we chose has been successfully applied to our "stone" texture set. We can further adjust this Surface's color by changing the albedo color to something brighter. To do so, click on "Verde Guatemala Marble" (listed under LAYER SET 2) to bring up the Surface's properties on the right side of the screen. Then click on "ALBEDO" to bring up a pop-up window with a color selector (pictured below). When you've found your desired color, finish by clicking "Apply" in the pop-up. In this example, we've chosen to change the albedo to a bright teal to resemble the turquoise stone on our real-life scanning object. Repeat this process of applying surface materials to all texture sets and adjust each Surface as needed. When you are ready to export, switch over to the Export tab and set your export preferences. Under Textures > Texture Maps, you have the option to export Albedo, Gloss, Roughness, Normal, Displacement, AO, and Metalness maps. In this example, we'll just be exporting Albedo, Roughness, Normal, and Metalness to keep everything simple. Once your export preferences have been set go to File > Quick Export. The screen will briefly flash each time it finishes exporting a map. After exporting, your new texture files should be waiting for you in the folder you saved them to on your desktop. Step #3 - Applying The New Texture To Your Scan Now that our new texture has been created, we'll head back into Blender and apply it to our model. To start, drag open a new editor window and set the Editor type to Shader Editor. Next, select your 3D scan and tab back over to the Material Properties tab. Under Material Properties, make sure the first of your material IDs is selected (in the case of this example, "base," pictured below). Let's add in the Albedo, Metalness, Roughness, and Normal texture maps we just made for the "base" texture set in Mixer. In the Shader Editor window, hit 'Shift a' > Texture > Image Texture to create a new Image Texture Node. Select "open" on the new Image Texture node and use the pop-up to navigate to the folder on your computer you exported your Quixel texture maps to. Then select the albedo map associated with the particular material ID you are working on (in this case we would pick the "base" albedo map since we are working on the base material in Blender). Repeat this process for as many texture maps as you have exported for that particular material section. In this example, we will be adding three additional Image Texture Nodes for the Roughness map, Metalness map, and Normal map. Let's finish by connecting the Image Texture Nodes to the Principled BSDF Node. To connect the Albedo drag the connector from "Color" on your Albedo Image Texture node to "Base Color" in the Principled BSDF node. To connect Roughness and Metalness Image Textures drag the connector from "Color" on each one to the corresponding "Roughness" and "Metalness" ports on the Principled BSDF. When connecting the image texture node for the Normal, don't forget to add a Normal Map node first. To do so, hit 'shift - a' and type "normal map" into the search. Then select the Normal Map node (pictured below). Finally, drag the connector from "Color" on your Image Texture node to "Color" on the Normal Map node. Then, drag the connector from "Normal" on your Normal Map node to "Normal" on the Principled BSDF node (shown below). Repeat this process of adding in the texture maps for each material ID section (base, stone, and back) until all new texture maps are applied to your 3D scan. Final Results Below are the final results! The image on the left is our original texture and the image on the right is our new custom texture. Whether you are unable to properly capture a texture in the first place or you'd like to experiment with alternate textures, the process of retexturing your 3D scan in Quixel Mixer is a quick and easy solution. Furthermore, with the variety of available Surfaces in Mixer, your options for possible textures are endless. While this process may seem complex at first, there are only three steps total to remember-- assign material IDs in Blender, create the texture in Mixer, and apply the final texture back in Blender. Did you find this article helpful? Consider subscribing in the footer below for updates on all our future blog posts!

A quick guide to sharing your 3D scans online + how to use Sketchfab Lab Experiment's Screen Shots tool to create high resolution 'renders' from your post. If you've recently found us through our Sketchfab page, you may have noticed we have nearly 100 uploads! One of the advantages of publishing your models on Sketchfab over other 3D sites is their unique 3D viewer, which allows your model to be viewed in 360° and in AR. Uploading your models to Sketchfab is a wonderful way to showcase them, whether it's a 3D scan from us or any other accepted file type! While the process isn't complex, there are some things that can be added to your upload to make it shine. In this guide, we'll be teaching you how to upload your first model to Sketchfab. We'll go over choosing the best 3D settings, making sure your 3D scan is discoverable on Sketchfab, and creating a high-resolution screenshot of your scan using Sketchfab Lab Experiment's Screen Shots tool. Let's begin! Step #1 — Uploading Your Model Importing Navigate your web browser to Sketchfab and click the orange "Upload" button in the upper right of the screen. Next, select your 3D scan by dragging and dropping it into the window, or by clicking the "browse" option. Adding a description A good description serves two functions— 1. It delivers important information on your model while increasing viewer interest and 2. it increases the "discoverability" of your model on Sketchfab's site. In their help article, Making Your Model Discoverable, Sketchfab states it is "important to make sure your models show up in search and galleries by including relevant titles, descriptions, tags, and categories." Sketchfab suggests discussing the following in your description: What inspired your work / a story behind the model For a 3D scan, this might be a brief story about where the original scanned object was found or what you found interesting about it. What tools and software were used to create the model Technical details of the model Catagories and Tags Below the description, select the category that best matches your model. You can select up to two different categories in total. Don't forget to add tags to your 3D scan as well! Tags are important in helping people use Sketchfab's search to find your model. Coming up with useful, relevant tags can sometimes be challenging, so it's important to get creative. We recommend thinking of different ways to describe the item you are posting. What would someone looking for a similar item type? For example, we are posting a 3D scan of a popular women's athletic shoe. Some possible tags might be: shoe, shoes, womens-shoe, womens-footware, (shoebrandname), footware, sneaker, runningshoe, athletic-shoe... Download Settings If you choose to let others download your model you have two options— 1. users can download it for free, or 2. you can charge users money for each download. To use the second option, you will first have to become an authorized seller on Sketchfab. If you choose to sell your scans, you should take into account that a percentage of your sale will go to fees for Sketchfab and Paypal and price them accordingly. Liscences For free models, Sketchfab lays out up to four options to select from— Attribution, Non-Commercial, No Derivatives, and Share-Alike. Each option is accompanied by a detailed description, so it is easy to understand which ones suit your needs. Note that you can select more than one of these options, i.e. you can select both Attribution and Non-Commercial. Based on your combination of choices, Sketchfab will delegate the correct license to the model CC BY, CC BY-SA, CC BY-ND, CC BY-NC, CC BY-NC-SA, CC BY-NC-ND, or CC0. For downloadable models, you have two licenses to choose from— Standard and Editorial. Standard: Users can use your model for anything they like, including commercially. Editorial: It is recommended to use this when your 3D scan shows IP that is not yours. Users are not allowed to use them for commercial or promotional purposes. Step #2 — Editing 3D Settings Now that we've outlined a bit of information about the 3D scan we're posting, we can move on to the 3D settings. Before selecting the blue "Edit 3D Settings" on the left side of your screen, don't forget to hit the orange "Save" button in the bottom right of the screen! Importing Missing Textures If your imported model looks like the picture above, you may need to import your textures! Doing so is easy. In the upper left of the screen, navigate to the icon that looks like a square picture frame to edit materials. Under PBR MAPS, click on "Base Color" > Texture > Manage Textures > Import Texture > and select your 3D scan's texture from your computer. The texture should now be applied to your model! If you scroll down a bit more, you can also adjust material attributes like roughness, subsurface scattering, opacity, emission, etc using the editor's sliders. Adding Lighting After applying your material, you may notice your model is a little dark. We can fix that by adding some lighting to the scene. Tab over to the light bulb icon to access the lighting settings. Make sure "LIGHTS" at the very top of the tab is set to "ON." Sketchfab has six presets for you to choose from to quickly set up your scene's lighting. Once you've selected your preferred preset, you can adjust the lighting under "LIGHT PROPERTIES." To add a bit more realism to your scene, we recommend turning on "GROUND SHADOWS" just below the light properties. Post Processing Filters Post-processing filters are the fun part! Here you can experiment with different effects on your model to see what makes your 3D scan really stand out! For the majority of 3D scans, we recommend you try applying the following filters: Enhancing Your 3D Scan: SSAO — This will enhance the appearance of occluded parts of your 3D model, increasing the look of depth and detail. SHARPNESS — This slider will enhance the overall appearance of detail in your scan. TONE MAPPING — We recommend experimenting with the Brightness and Exposure sliders, in particular, to further enhance the lighting and visibility of your model. Adding Artistic Flair To Your 3D Scan: GRAIN — This adds an adjustable film grain effect to your scene. For further effect, you can opt for an animated grain if you so choose. CHROMATIC ABERRATIONS — This is a color distortion effect that creates a unique rainbow bleed around the borders of your scan. When used correctly, it can really make a model pop! VIGNETTE — This effect will darken the edges of your screen and create a framing effect that will draw the viewer's focus to your 3D scan. Adjusting Your 3D Scan's Orientation If your scan is looking a little lopsided or listing in any odd directions, you can fix that under the GENERAL tab (gear icon). Under GENERAL> Straighten Model, make sure "Show advanced rotation" is checked. From here you can use the rotation wheel to orient your scan. Adding background color In our opinion, the background color is one of the most underrated effects you can apply to make your 3D scan pop! You can find the background color settings under GENERAL > BACKGROUND > Background type > COLOR. Use the color picker to experiment with different shades and colors. The higher the contrast between your 3D scan and the background, the more it will stand out! Saving view The last thing we need to do before publishing our 3D scan is to choose our thumbnail. This is an important step as it's how your model will appear to Sketchfab users before they click on it. In a pool of other equally amazing 3D models, first impressions can be vital! First, orient your scan in the 3D viewer how you'd like it to appear in the thumbnail. Hover your mouse over "Save View" in the upper left corner of the 3D viewer to reveal a grid that will show you if your scan is centered. When you are happy with the orientation, click "Save View." A preview of your thumbnail will appear in the upper left corner once it has been saved. You are able to repeat this process as many times as you need to get the perfect thumbnail. Once the thumbnail has been saved, click "Save Settings" and then "Exit" in the upper right corner of the screen to return to the model's description. Step #3 — Publishing Your Model To publish your model, simply press the orange "Publish" button in the lower-left of the screen. Make sure to review your description and tags before publishing, so that everything is correct! Once published, navigate to your model to see the final result via clicking on the "SEE MY MODEL" in the pop-up or by viewing it on your profile page! Adding your 3D scan to a collection (optional) Once you have accumulated a number of 3D scans on your profile, it may be helpful to add them to a collection. Your Sketchfab followers are able to subscribe to individual collections, which can help your 3D scans find an interested party more quickly + increase visibility! Collections are also a helpful way for you to organize your scans, allowing you to locate them more easily. Step #4 (Optional) — Creating A Screenshot 'Render' If you'd like to quickly generate a 'render' (that's actually a high-resolution screenshot) of your model without going to the trouble of setting up one in a software like Blender, you can use Sketchfab Lab's Screenshot Tool! Loading your 3D scene With Screenshot Tool loaded in a new window of your browser, click the blue "LOAD 3D SCENE" button in the upper right corner of your screen. In the pop-up, select "FROM URL" and paste the URL of the 3D scan you published to Sketchfab. Exporting your screenshot With your model loaded, you can choose the orientation of the screenshot the same way you oriented the thumbnail view. Screenshot Tool also lets you create screenshots of things like the matcap and wireframe! To do this, simply click on the model inspector (the stack icon in the lower right of the 3D viewer) and select the view you'd like. Customize the settings on the right of the screen as needed for your project. When you are ready to capture the screenshot, click the blue "Export Screenshot" button on the middle right side of your screen. This will download the screenshot to your computer. Final Result Here's how our screenshot turned out! If you enjoyed this article, consider subscribing to our mailing list in the footer below! We share updates every time we post a new blog + if we are running any specials on 3D scanning services!

Exploring possible options for changing and improving your 3D scan's textures. Scenario—you have an amazing 3D scan with applied texture, but you'd like to take the materials up a level to really bring it to life. Where to start? In this post, we'll be walking you through a few possible options for two free software, Blender and Quixel Mixer. We'll be starting with this 4K textured scan of a memorial Hot Wheels belt buckle in Blender 3.0. If you'd like to follow along with our example model, you can download it free on our Sketchfab. Tip #1 - Adjusting Material in Blender 3.0 If you're just interested in making quick, simple changes to your scan's material— e.g. adjusting roughness, metallic, and specular properties— we recommend playing with the material settings in Blender. Import your model into Blender with File > Import > select your model's file type > select your model. Make sure your model is selected in the Outliner (located in the upper right corner of the screen). With your mouse hovering over the model in your 3D Viewport, hit 'z' and then '2' on your keyboard to change the shading view to Material Preview. You should see your 3D scan with its applied texture now. If the texture is missing, follow the instructions here to import it. To edit the Material Properties, click on the orange checkered ball icon in the Properties Editor (lower right corner of the screen). From here you can adjust the sliders until your scan's material is to your liking! In the example below, we've increased the metallic properties and decreased the roughness to produce a shinier metal texture for our belt buckle. Tip #2 - Painting New Texture In Blender 3.0 If you're interested in 'hand painting' parts of your 3D scan, Blender's Texture Paint tool is a good option. Switch from the Layout tab to the Texture Paint tab (located in the tabs at the very top of your screen). Make sure the object interaction mode is set to "Texture Paint" after switching tabs. Under Properties Editor (Lower right of your screen) > Active Tool > Texture Slots, make sure your 3D scan's texture is selected. Scroll down to Brushes, Brush Settings, and Color Picker to select the type, size, and color of your paintbrush. To apply texture paint, simply click and drag your mouse over your scan in the 3D Viewport. The new texture should appear over the model as you paint (pictured below). Cleaning Up With Clone Tool If you notice your new texture paint is being applied to areas you don't want it, you can use the clone tool to clean it up (pictured left). With the clone tool active (Shortcut Shift - Spacebar, 4), hit 'Ctrl' and left-click to select the area on your model you'd like to clone. Then, simply draw the new cloned texture over any previous painting mistakes to disguise them! Try to select an area near (but not too close) to your mistake for the best color match. When you are finished with your painting don't forget to hit Save All Images back in Texture Slots. This is a very important step to remember as without it you would lose all the work you did painting! Pictured above are the results of our texture paint on top of our material adjustments from the previous example! Tip #3 - Applying Smart Materials in Quixel Mixer If you're looking to completely replace or change the texture of your 3D scan, Quixel's Smart Materials are an easy way to give your model a realistic texture bursting with detail— all by dragging and dropping! Attributes of smart materials like noise, texture, opacity, ambient occlusion, etc can also be edited for a fit that's unique to your 3D scan. To start, open up Mixer and click "New Mix" in the upper right. Set your mix name and working resolution in the pop-up window. 2. Click on Type (pictured below) and change it from "Plane" to "Custom Model." 3. Once imported your model should resemble the photo below. To add a smart material, click on the 'S' icon under the layers tab (highlighted in the photo). 4. Select the smart material you'd like to apply to your 3D scan, then click on the material to apply it. 5. You'll see that each smart material is made of many layers. Each layer is able to be adjusted by clicking on it. Adjust the layers to your liking or leave them as is— easy! Using Paintbrush Stamps If you'd like to add another layer of dimension to your texture inside Mixer, you can create a paint layer and use a special brush to 'stamp' on texture. Click on the paintbrush icon in the layers tab to add a paint layer. To download a special 'stamp' brush, navigate to the Online tab (located in the upper left of your screen) and change the search type in the dropdown to "Brush." Here you can browse through brush designs until you find one you like! To download a brush, simply click on it and hit download. It will now appear in your brush library back under the Viewport tab. After you select your brush, you can customize its settings by scrolling down a little under the brush library. We recommend you set the color to something similar to your model's smart material and lower the opacity a bit for optimum blending and realism. We also recommend that you set the displacement to 0 before painting (pictured below). Exporting You can set your preferred export settings in the Export tab (uppermost right tab on your screen). To actually export your work, select File > Quick Export. The files you've chosen to export will save to the destination you set in the Export tab. Below is our final result for our Quixel Mixer texture. By using free tools within Blender or other software, like Mixer, you can quickly and easily adjust the fine details of a scan's texture— or remake its texture completely! Did you find this article helpful? Consider subscribing to our mailing list in the footer below for more info! We'll send you an email whenever we post a new article. Happy texturing!

An easy guide on reducing 3D scan mesh size and baking textures from high poly to low poly in Blender. With such a wide variety of uses— game assets, NFTs, e-commerce, AR/VR, etc—there may be times when you need to reduce the file size of your 3D scan to suit a specific project. In this guide, we'll be walking you through lowering the poly count in your 3D mesh without compromising on quality. For this project, we'll be using two free and easy-to-use programs, Blender and Instant Meshes. If you'd like to follow along with our high poly example model, you can download it here on our Sketchfab page. Step #1 - Importing your low and high poly meshes The ultimate goal of this project will be to bake the color and normals from our original high poly 3D scan onto a newly generated, lower poly model. This will result in a model with high textural detail and a low poly count— the best of both worlds! Importing The High Poly To Blender First, in Blender, go to File > Import > and import your original high poly scan. Don't adjust the orientation of your model yet, as we'll need it to line up perfectly with our low poly model later. Generating The Low Poly Mesh Now to generate our new lower poly model. In Instant Meshes, click the "Open Mesh" button to locate and import your 3D scan. Use the "Target vertex count" slider to choose the rough amount of vertices you'd like your low poly model to have. Click the "Solve" button directly below the Target Vertex Count slider to generate the flow of your model's topology. Then click the secondary "Solve" button to generate your mesh preview. If you are unhappy with the flow of your model's topology, you can use the comb tool (located just below the vertex count slider) to adjust it. If you make any changes with the comb tool, be sure to hit the second solve button again before selecting "Export Mesh." Select "Extract Mesh" to generate your new low poly mesh and "Save" to save it to your computer. Note that while saving it, you must type ".obj" or ".ply" at the end of your file name or you will receive an error message. Importing The Low Poly Mesh To Blender Back in Blender, import in your new low poly mesh. If you'd like to adjust the orientation of your 3D scans, now is a perfect time. Make sure both high and low poly models are selected and orient the models to your liking. Both models must remain perfectly overlapping for our texture baking process to work. Once you are satisfied with the orientation of your meshes, hide the high poly 3D scan (click the eye icon next to the high poly mesh in the Outliner), so we can focus on our low poly. Lastly, in the 3D Viewport, right-click on your low poly mesh and select "Shade Smooth" to smooth out any rough faces on your model. Step #2 - Adding modifiers Next, we'll be adding some modifiers to our low poly mesh to ensure it's fitting perfectly to our high poly model for the bake. In the Properties Editor Tab, click on Modifier Properties (green wrench icon). Click on "Add Modifier" and select "Multiresolution." Then, click on "Add Modifier" again and select "Shrinkwrap." Under the Shrinkwrap modifier, set "Target" as your high poly scan and change "Wrap Method" to "Project." Under "Axis" make sure both "Negative" and "Positive" are selected. Now, under the Multiresolution modifier, click "Subdivide" two or three times. Finally, select the Shrinkwrap modifier and apply it (Ctrl-A). Navigate back to Multiresolution once more and set the "Level Viewport" to 0. Step #3 - Setting up image texture nodes In this step, we'll be working in the Shader Editor to set up the right texture nodes for our bake. First, we'll need to pull up a window for the Shader Editor. Start by hovering your mouse over the upper right corner of the viewport until you see a ' + ' icon. Click and hold to drag out a new window. Change the "Editor Type" to "Shader Editor" by clicking the upper-most left icon in the window. Creating A New Material To start, we'll create new material for our low poly model. Make sure your low poly mesh is selected. In the Properties Editor tab, navigate down to the Material Properties tab and click on New Material (the double square icon just below your Material Index). Rename your new material so it is easy to locate (in this example we named it LowPoly) and make sure it is selected. Creating Color Node Back in your Shader Editor window, we'll be editing the nodes for this new material. Hit 'shift - a' to bring up the add menu. Select Texture > Image Texture (pictured below). On the Image Texture node click "New" and enter the following settings: Name: Your3DScanName_Color Width: 4096px Height: 4096px Alpha: Checked Click and drag the connector from "Color" on your Image Texture node to "Base Color" on the Principled BSDF node. Creating The Normal Node Again, hit 'shift - a' > Texture > Image Texture to create another Image Texture Node. Next hit, 'shift - a' > type "normal map" in the search and select the Normal Map node (pictured below). On the new Image Texture node click "New" and enter the following settings: Name: Your3DScanName_Normal Width: 4096px Height: 4096px Alpha: Unchecked 32 Bit Float: Checked Click and drag the connector from "Color" on your Image Texture node to "Color" on the Normal Map node. Then, drag the connector from "Normal" on your Normal Map node to "Normal" on the Principled BSDF node. Step #4 - Unwrapping We'll need to unwrap our low poly mesh before we can start baking. To do this, drag out a third window and set the editor type to UV Editor. Next, navigate to "Edit Mode" in your 3D Viewport (make sure your low poly mesh is still selected). Then, hit 'u' > "Smart UV Project" to unwrap the model. Step #5 - Baking Baking Normals Go to the Properties Editor tab, click on Render Properties and scroll down to "Bake." Select "Bake from Multires" and set Bake Type as "Normals." In the Shader Editor window, click on the Image Texture node for your normal map (in this example, Zero_Normal) to select it. Back in the Render Properties tab, hit "Bake." If your bake was successful, your screen should resemble the photo below. Baking Color Baking color is only slightly more complex! Back in the Render Properties, uncheck "Bake from Multires" and set the Bake Type as "Diffuse." Under Contribution, uncheck Direct and Indirect. Make sure both Color and Selected to Active are checked. Expand "Selected to Active" and set Extrusion to 0.01m. This time, in the Shader Editor window, click on the Image Texture node for your scan's color (in this example, Zero_Color) to select it. Hit "Bake" once more. After a successful bake, your screen will resemble the photo below. Final Results Below is a wireframe comparison of our two 3D scans. Our high poly scan (right) has 1M polys, while our low poly scan (left) has 11K polys— a 989,000 polygon difference! Here's a render of the final result! While you can spot a few small differences between the high and low poly models, the low poly has retained the majority of its quality. Not bad for two free programs! We hope you found our article on reducing poly count in 3D scans helpful! If you used Arkify for your 3D scans, we are happy to export your scans in any polygon count(s) of your choice to save you the work! Interested in scanning with us? Shoot us an email at arkify3d@gmail.com or use the contact form on our website!

Exploring different resolution choices for mesh data and texture in 3D scans. With all the possible options, it can be difficult to choose which resolution is best for your 3D scan project. While each project will have different needs, the first thing you may need to consider is this— what is more important, graphics or performance? Generally speaking, higher resolution and textures will create more lifelike models while creating higher poly counts and larger file sizes. Conversely, lower resolutions will save you processing power and space on your computer but will ultimately look less convincing than their weighty counterparts. Here's the good news— with such a large variety of options for both mesh and texture processing, it's easy to strike the perfect balance between the two. In this post, we'll be exploring and comparing a few options to help you get a better idea of what your project needs. Resolution vs Polygons vs Texture These three factors each contribute to the overall look and performance of your 3D scan. Resolution is the level of detail visible on the mesh (determined by feature size). The smaller the resolution the smaller the features we can see. Polygon count refers to how many polygons make up your mesh. The higher the count, the smaller the polys, allowing them to create more detailed shapes within your mesh. Texture resolution refers to the size of the pixels that are mapped to your 3D scan. If you process a mesh at a higher resolution it gives the scan a better starting point to reduce the polygon count. Processing at a higher resolution will give the mesh more features, and thus, when you reduce the polygon count, your mesh will better maintain curved areas of the mesh. However, there are times when you need to reduce the polygons to such a low level that you won't be able to reduce a high-resolution model low enough without causing noticeable problematic 'rough' areas. As such, requesting a low-resolution mesh may be a better option depending on the use of the mesh file. Let's compare some different resolutions and polygon counts. We'll start by looking at the mesh without texture to give you a better picture of the details on each scan. High Resolution High Res High Poly Mesh processed at 0.2mm resolution with 7,926,253 polygons. High Res Med Poly Mesh processed at 0.2mm resolution with 914,110 polygons. High Res Low Poly Mesh processed at 0.2mm resolution with 273,841 polygons. Medium Resolution Med Res High Poly Mesh processed at 0.4mm resolution with 1,184,037 polygons. Med Res Med Poly Mesh processed at 0.4mm resolution with 299,999 polygons. Med Res Low Poly Mesh processed at 0.4mm resolution with 100,000 polygons. Low Resolution Low Res High Poly Mesh processed at 0.7mm resolution with 318,224 polygons. Low Res Med Poly Mesh processed at 0.7mm resolution with 100,000 polygons. Low Res Low Poly Mesh processed at 0.7mm resolution with 50,000 polygons. To illustrate the idea that processing at a lower resolution allows for better polygon reduction, the High Res Low Poly image looks significantly rougher than the Med Res Med Poly despite having similar polygon counts. This is because we didn't have such a highly detailed mesh surface to start from with the Med Res Med Poly, allowing for a smoother finish on our mesh after reduction. The higher the resolution and poly count, the more detailed the mesh becomes. That being said, it is not necessary for every project to require a 7M polygon mesh. Med res, med poly is often a great middle-ground for projects that require a fairly detailed mesh, with a limited number of polygons. Another option for projects requiring a smaller file size could be applying a high-resolution texture to a low-resolution low poly model. As you'll see below, texture can make up for a lot of lost detail in lower res/poly models. Exploring Texture Let's take a look at one of these 3D scans with texture applied. We'll be exploring three texture resolutions— 16k, 4k, and 1k. Each texture will be displayed on the low res, low poly model in the picture above to illustrate the impact a texture can have on the overall look of a scan! 16K Texture on A Low Res Low Poly Mesh 4K Texture on A Low Res Low Poly Mesh 1K Texture on A Low Res Low Poly Mesh Here are a few things to note about texture resolution on 3D scans: Texture can make up a for a great deal of lost detail in a low res model There is a noticeable improvement between 1k and 4k textures There is less of a noticeable difference between textures over 4k We've illustrated some common resolution choices, but there are many more options available! If you are working on a scanning project with us, we are happy to process and export multiple resolutions of your scans for no extra charge. Have any questions about resolution options for your project? Reach out via email (akrify3d@gmail.com) or the contact form on this site!

Introductory tips and tricks for importing and rendering your 3D scans in one of the most popular free 3D programs available. Interested in making renders of your 3D scans? Blender is an incredibly versatile (and free) tool that comes with a powerful render engine. In this quick tutorial, we'll be walking you through importing a 3D scan into Blender and creating a lifelike render in Blender's Cycles engine. If you have not downloaded Blender already, you can do so here. Step #1 - Bringing your 3D Scan into Blender Importing In Blender, go to File > Import > select the file type that matches your 3D scan > and import your model. Your scan may take more time to load if it has a large polygon count. Note: If you are importing a .obj your texture should automatically load in with your model. If not, it's easy to add it in manually! Start by hovering your mouse over the upper right corner of the viewport until you see a ' + ' icon. Click and hold to drag out a new window. In the new window change the "Editor Type" to "Shader Editor" by clicking the upper-most left icon in the window. Select your 3D scan and hit 'shift + a' > Texture > Image Texture in the new window. Drag and connect "Color" from the Image Texture node to "Base Color" on Principled BSDF. Finally, click "Open Image" (folder icon) on your Image Texture node to select the missing .png from your files. To verify this worked, tab over to the Material Preview (hotkey 'z + 2') in your 3D Viewport window. Adjusting Your Model Once imported, you'll need to rotate (hotkey 'r') and scale ('s') the model so it is oriented to your liking. Tabbing over to the material preview in Viewport Shading (located in the upper right corner of the viewport) you may notice your 3D scan is extra glossy. This is because models automatically import in with '0' Roughness. To fix this, with your scan selected, go to "Material Properties" in the Properties Editor (lower right of the screen) and raise the roughness value of the item to your liking. In the image below, we brought the roughness of this vintage purse up to 0.7 for a more realistic leather look. Step #3 - Setting up a simple background Building the background with planes A clean and undistracting background helps showcase your 3D scan while adding a professional flair to your renders. Start by adding the floor of your background by hitting 'shift + a'> Mesh > Plane. Scale up your plane ('s') so it is quite a bit larger than your 3D scan. When we add a camera to the scene you'll want to make sure your plane is big enough that the edges can't be seen through the camera view. Note: you may need to adjust the orientation of your scan so it doesn't clip through the floor plane. Toggle over to "Edit Mode" (upper left of the viewport) and click "Edge Select" (located directly right of "Edit Mode" and circled in the image above). Select the edge closest to the back of your 3D scan by clicking on it. To extrude this edge up into a wall, press 'e + z' and drag the edge up with your mouse. 'e' allows us to extrude the edge, while 'z' makes sure we are only moving up along the z-axis, so our wall is straight and not listing in any odd directions. Creating a slope With the plane selected in your Outliner, return to "Object Mode." In the Properties tab, scroll down to "Modifier Properties" (the green wrench icon) to add a modifier. Hit "Add Modifier" and select "Bevel." Adjust 'Segments' and 'Amount' to your liking and hit 'Ctrl - A' to apply. To finish things off, right-click on your plane in the viewport and select "shade smooth." Step #4 - Lights and camera Setting up your camera Hit 'shift - a' to bring up the add menu and select 'camera.' A quick and easy hack for setting up the camera involves using your viewport navigation tools. Use the navigation tools to rotate, zoom, and move your view around your 3D scan. When you've found the perfect view go to View > Align View > Align Active Camera To View (shown in the photo above). Check how your scene looks through the camera's lens by clicking the camera icon on the right side of your viewport (shortcut Numpad 0). Make sure the edges of your background aren't showing when you look through the camera view. Creating a composition with your 3D scan While you may only need to render a single head-on image of your 3D scan, we recommend creating a composition with multiple copies of your model arranged in different positions. This will produce a more dynamic render that showcases various details of the scan from multiple angles. Use hotkey 'd' to duplicate a selected object and 'r' and 'g' to rotate and move it into a composition of your choice. Adding Lights Moving over to the "Rendered" view in the Viewport Shading tab (upper right of the viewport), you may notice that your scene is very dark. To remedy this, let's add some simple lighting to the scene. First, in your Properties tab, select the Scene tab (the camera icon) and make sure the render engine is set to "Cycles." Then in your viewport hit 'shift - a' > Light > Area (illustrated in the image below). If you don't see anything, you'll likely need to scale up your light ('s'). Once scaled, move the light so that it is directly over your 3D scan. Now that the light is in position, it's time to adjust its brightness. Make sure your Area Light is selected in the Outliner and navigate to the Object Data Properties (pink lightbulb icon) in the Properties tab. Under "Power" enter in a fairly large number. You'll have to play with the numbers a bit to find the right strength for your scene, but we usually start with 500,000 for a standard brightly lit render. We recommend you change the shape of your light to disk, as it creates softer reflections in shiny objects than an angular shape does. Composing the lights Next, we'll want to add in a couple more lights to make sure our scene is well lit. Do this by duplicating ('d') your first area light, moving it to the side ('g'), and rotating it ('r') so that it is angled inwards, towards your 3D scan. Repeat this process on the opposite side, so your scene resembles the one pictured below. Step #5 - Rendering To create a render, simply navigate to the "Render" tab and click "Render Image" (pictured above). Before you do so, we have a few recommendations on your render settings that can be quickly set in the "Render Properties" tab. Note that while these settings work for us, you may have to make slight adjustments depending on your rendering needs. Make sure "Render Engine" is set to "Cycles" and "Device" is set to "GPU Compute" Go to Sampling > Viewport and set "Max Samples" to 32 Go to Sampling > Render and enter the following settings: Noise Threshold: 0.0100 Max Samples: 400 Min Samples: 0 Under Sampling > Denoise make sure "Denoise" is checked and use "Optix" as your denoiser. Under Sampling > Advanced make sure "Seed" is set to 0. Go to Light Paths > Max Bounces and enter the following settings: Total: 4 Diffuse: 4 Glossy: 3 Transmission: 3 Volume: 0 Transparent: 4 Under Light Paths > Caustics turn off "reflective" and "refractive" and make sure "Filter Glossy" is set to 0. After your render finishes, save the image to your computer by going to Image > Save As (illustrated above). Final Result Here we have the final result! If you'd like to take your render up a level, you can play with the values in an image editing tool like Adobe Lightroom, to adjust variables like sharpness and contrast. While this tutorial followed a very simple render setup, Blender also allows you to create ones that are much more complex. We hope you enjoyed our quick tutorial on rendering 3D scans in Blender! Feel free to reach out if you have any questions and we'll be happy to help.