Adding 3D objects into the CMS

You will not be able to add 3D Objects unless the functionality has been enabled for your organization. Contact your Driftscape representative if you wish to purchase this add-on or test a pre-release version.

Customers can associate a 3D Object with a place, event or tour in the Driftscape CMS (but not tour stops). 3D objects are added as media items to a POI. Only add one 3D object to any POI: only the first one is used, if you add more than one.

• Start by editing and adding a new media item to a POI in your organization:

• If you do not see the new ‘Object’ media type, contact your Driftscape representative to add this paid service to your plan.

• Use the ‘Choose File’ button to select the associated 3D object file.

• It must be less than 20mb in size. We limit the size to prevent speed delays in AR Mode, since larger objects will consume too much processing ability and worsen the user experience.

• We recommend only USDZ files. Apple/iOS only supports limited features of USD in its ARKit functionality. You may send your USDZ file to us prior usage if you wish, for us to test it.

• Make sure the ‘Is enabled’ setting is on. You can turn this off if you are just testing, or having problems, in which case the default automatically generated 3D sprite is used instead.

• There are a variety of settings you can can change with 3D objects to help control the user experience:

• Rotation X/Y/Z: These specify a rotation from the scene origin for the object. Normally, you should place the object such that it is resting on the Y/X plane, facing the negative Y Axis. You can use these settings to rotate the object if changing the source file is not possible. The rotations are specified in a clockwise direction looking down the axis to the origin, in degrees.

• Is compass facing: Normally, when the object is initially populated into the AR mode scene, it will be placed oriented and facing the user. But, you may want to have the object facing a specific compass direction, if the object is meant to be relative to the landscape at its location.

• Compass facing angle:  Use this setting to set the angle in degrees from North, going clockwise. This setting is ignored unless the Is compass facing option is enabled.

• Scale: This setting is helpful to get the object to appear at the right size in the AR mode scene. The default, 1, means that the object is displayed at the scale defined in the object. For example, if the object bounding box is 2 meters high, the object is placed in the scene at that height. You may need to increase the scale or decrease it for the object. For example, if an object is defined as 100m tall, you are not likely to want that since the object will fill the whole camera view anywhere near the object! In such a case, you may set the scale to 0.01, for example, to make it 1 meter tall. Do not set this to zero or a value less than zero.

• Height change: this value is used to adjust the vertical position of the object (the Z axis in the model definition). For example, if the center of the object is defined at the origin, you may want to add a positive adjustment of ½ of the height, so it is ‘resting’ on the X/Y plane. This transformation is applied after the object rotation above, if any.

• Is planar: The default behavior for 3D objects is that they simply replace the generated sprite, placed at the same position (at the height of the phone). You can enable this setting to have the object only placed in the scene when a suitable nearby horizontal surface is detected. When the surface is detected, then the object will be anchored on the center of the detected surface. The default 3D sprite is not replaced until a surface near to the POI is detected (such as the floor, or a table top).

• Object placement distance: this setting is ignored unless Is planar is enabled. Since iOS typically only detects surfaces that are within a few meters of the user, a very large object (like a building) may be placed too close to the viewer. Set this value to a distance meters that the object is moved farther away from the phone before it is placed on the detected surface. The default is zero, which is suitable for small objects, say 50cm or less.

• Object presentation distance: this setting is always used, and represents the distance from the user at which the default 3D sprite is replaced with the 3D object. For example, 50 meters would mean that when the user is 50 meters or less away from the POI, then the default sprite is replaced with the 3D object. Generally, you should not set this to more than 200 meters, unless the object is very large (like a ship in a harbor). Given inherent inaccuracy with GPS functionality, you should probably not set this to less than 3 meters.