Before importing your assets to BRIO, make sure they've been prepared correctly in your native design software to ensure smooth performance in the BRIO viewer.
In this article:
- Supported File Formats
- Optimize assets for Augmented Reality
- Optimize assets for Real-time 3D + VR
- 3D resources for beginners
Export files in a supported format
You can optimize your 3D models in your native design software by saving them in .FBX .OBJ .GLB, or .DAE format. Learn more about the differences between a few of these file formats here.
If you are importing 2D assets, JPEGs, .PNGs, and .MP4 formats are supported.
BRIO also offers hundreds of FREE assets and models from the BRIO Object Library, which you can access when you sign up.
Optimize assets for your audiences' devices.
The purpose of the optimization process is to help your end customers have the best experience viewing your assets - whether that is in 3D, Augmented Reality, or VR.
Different devices have different rendering limitations - for example, the AR render engine that is built into most mobile phones is more limited than 3D rendering on a desktop.
For this reason, you should keep in mind the device your audiences will eventually use to view your BRIO scene - for instance if you do not intend to publish an AR version of your 3D scene, there is no need to stick within AR limitations.
Find a full list of performance guidelines for each viewing format here.
Optimizing Assets for Augmented Reality
Most AR devices today are found on mobile phones. The processor and system ram have limitations that laptops & desktops don’t.
For this reason, it's necessary to plan ahead if you will want to have your models displayed in AR so that they playback smoothly for your audience. Follow the tips below to optimize your model for AR.
Clean geometry means a happy audience
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- Make sure you have clean geometry with no floating vertices. You can fix this in Blender (it's free). Use Mesh>Clean Up > Degenerate Dissolve in Blender to clean your mesh.
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Keep the scene as light as possible
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- Mesh polygon counts should be reduced to less than 100,000 triangles. A single quad counts as 2 tris.
- Keep the number of texture maps to 5 or fewer, and smaller than 2048 x 2048.
- Keep the numbers of material shaders to 5 or fewer.
Prepare non-overlapping UVs + textures
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- Make sure you don’t use multiple materials assigned to different faces within a single object. Use textures to define material differences or break the model apart by the material. Tools like Quixel Suite, Substance Painter, Mari, or Mudbox are great for doing this painting work.
- Keeping your all UVs in 0-1 UV space is recommended
- Make sure all vertex points have UVs
Prepare animations
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- Try not to include animation that scales up from 0,0,0 in scale. Use 0.0001 as the smallest
- Include only 1 skinned skeleton per scene
- Keep one connected hierarchy for your skeleton. Don't export for AR more than one root.
If you checked all of these items your models should work great in Augmented Reality. If you are just using BRIO for real-time 3D on the web, most of these items will not be of concern such as polycount, materials, and UV placement within 0-1.
Check our Augmented Reality Guide for more details.
Optimizing Assets for Real-time 3D and VR
For Desktop 3D and VR, stay within the following guidelines:
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- Make sure your model has fewer than 200k polys
- Include no more than 16 texture maps (no larger than 2048 x 2048px)
- Keep the number of material shaders to 8 or fewer.
- If your scene includes rigged animations, use a maximum of 4.
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For mobile 3D
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- Make sure your model has fewer than 150k polys
- Include no more than 5 texture maps (no larger than 2048 x 2048px)
- Keep the number of material shaders to 5 or fewer.
- Include only 1 rigged animation.
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Once your model is optimized and imported to BRIO, check the performance guide overview to make sure your final scene is within the applicable limitations. Then you can publish and share 3D models with colleagues, clients and followers using BRIO.
3D Resources for Beginners
You can also find a great selection of textures on the web if you know where to look. Check out this article to learn about where you can find texture libraries online.
If you’re a beginner who has limited or no experience making digital 3D models, you can find thousands of ready-to-use models through websites like turbosquid.