POC: Interactive 3D Models

Welcome to MKI's Dev Lab! As technology changes, we love to explore, highlight, and test novel concepts and developments.

This article outlines a proof of concept: developing interactive 3D models.

We are often asked to incorporate highly interactive elements into our custom software and web applications. These elements engage audiences in more tangible ways, requiring a user to be an active participant rather than a passive one. 

Recently, we had a specific use case to incorporate a series of 3D models that can be selected and manipulated by the users. 

Below are examples of this development.

3D Image: Autorotation

A 3D image can easily be incorporated into an application, but to demonstrate that it is an active element - meaning it is interactive - requires us to animate the 3D image. 

In the below example, we enable the 3D image to autorotate after a certain time has lapsed from last click by user.

3D Image: Interactivity

The user can easily click on the image and rotate by holding down the mouse button and moving the mouse around. It is highly responsive and rotates horizontally and in all directions.

All images used in this development are highly customizable. For the ferret, we used: Ferret by Poly, licensed under CC-BY.

The background image can also be updated to be a color, pattern, or image. For this image, we used an image from Morguefile.com.