STL Viewer / Renderer

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#1

Hi,

Here is a free product we built in my company, I thought I would share it as it can be used to create incredible renders with just a raw STL file:

stl-viewer.dualbox.com

No upload, no remote baking, everything occurs online. STL files are processed automatically for the smooth render option. For now we use a StandardMaterial applied to the whole model. The model can be rotated for better light orientation, the background is customizable (and can be transparent).
Anti-Aliasing is not perfect as we are still working on how to combine the shadow baker with Three.js anti-aliasing pass in the best way.
Also note that it does not work on some Apple devices, due to a hardware or driver bug on their end.

I especially like the render of the skull example, quite cool for a model with no normals or textures:

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If you make use of this, please post some of your resulting images here, I’m curious :slight_smile:

We are considering adding features too.

10 Likes
#2

Ambient occlusion looks very good ! How does it work ?

It would be nice I think to select parts to render with flat shading and parts with smooth shading. Bellow for instance, the ring looks better in smooth shading while the gemstone should remain flat shaded.

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1 Like
#3

Thanks for your feedback !

I can’t tell much about the method used to compute the ambient shadows. It’s a kind of fake raytracing made by batch on the GPU. Very greedy as we take several hundred milllion samples, most of them are discarded. Incoming light for each pixel is then accumulated and averaged to get the final result which is applied as a final pass.
The algorithm can also take into account the intensity of the environment to have some areas brighter than others, but it’s not activated here as the benefit is small.

Concerning the stone, the system is detecting sharp edges here, but we may later add a way to import other file format with sharp edges already split (like OBJ or PLY).

That being said, I’m not sure we will address this particular need since we have other systems more adapted to jewelery, as you can see in this example : https://dualbox.com/apps/stones-ring-3design-01/production

Thanks again for your feedback !

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#5

Man, I love the AO, it looks so smooth! I’m trying to set shadows to “Baked per Vertex”, but is not letting me select it. Is that feature not activated yet?

#6

Thanks!
Indeed, Vertex Baking is a “future feature” :grin:

Actually it’s already implemented but not yet integrated in the app. I will post the news here when it is done. Unfortunately, my working time on this free app has been limited :disappointed_relieved:

Think about sharing the link, the more visitors we have and the easiest it will be for me to justify spending time on improvements :wink:

#7

Added per vertex baking. A bit slow on mobiles and slow GPUs, but gives very nice results for applications like miniature configurators like this one.

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#8

That is so cool! It may be a little slow, but at least it only has to be calculated once! :wink:

#9

What a great tool! Just amazing!

Question: do you have any plans for STL editing? Ie: scaling, water-tighting?

#10

Not in this tool which is basically a renderer for screenshots.

On https://dualbox.com, you can find some free tools to merge STL vertices, detect sharp edges and export in other formats.
A tool for scaling STL can easily be done with Dualbox’s builder, and we have some modules you can use to compute volume or surface, and even a basic mesh simplifier… We may add more later, but we do not have much requests in this direction for now.

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#11

Great!
Did your company make dualbox?

#12

Yes :slight_smile:
Dualbox is a saas software to create online 3D apps without coding. We also offer consulting services.

#13

Holy cow, dude, thank you so much! I’ve been doing my shots in another tool, then run it through Photoshop. While I may still have to push it through PS to get the size I want, this is so much easier to get proper screenshots <3

Now all I could ask for is a “size” shower in a corner, especially Z. :slight_smile:

#14

Adding one more wish: saving my settings after closing the browser :slight_smile:

#15

Hello!
Thank you for your feedback :slight_smile:
Yes I would like to improve the tool with a size option for the screenshot and persistent parameters.
Even make a desktop version out of it and allow for multi-material…
Maybe later this year :slight_smile:
In the meantime, please share, the most visitors we have the more I can justify time spent on improvements!

1 Like
#16

Absolutely will! I love it and it’s so helpful :smiley: Thanks again!

#17

Going to have to pause using it. Love it, really, but I need some way to display the size of my items and that’s not possible :slight_smile: