Forge viewer: Custom materials step-by-step

Question

I've seen some examples of high quality and detailed models that works for the Autodesk Model Derivative. Some example are Dotty , Dasher and Fusion Race Car . Dotty is actually amazing.. even has some reflection added in there.

So, to achieve this I would need to upload the textures and the materials with my model. I've tried to reproduce the guide telling me to create a ZIP containing of the OBJ, MTL and PNG. First of all, to be sure I am on the correct path when I am testing out different workflows: is OBJ the only format that can be uploaded with custom materials/textures? I know that I can add standard materials to rvt, fbx, 3ds etc, but I do not have a clear idea on how to upload custom materials/textures.

Could you kindly give me a step-by-step how to get the best possible visualization of the uploaded models? Thanks a lot

Answer 1

Models from Fusion 360 uses the built-in material library, in the case of Fusion Race Car you mentioned. The Dasher sample uses a Revit model of a "well-designed" model in Revit, but no custom materials. Don't have much info on the Dotty format, but would consider the direction of obj or rcp (Reality Capture or point cloud) files, both can have texture.

For a custom material, OBJ is the best route as of now, allowing you to include your textures. As far as Forge, the translation is exactly the same: upload the zip with all files and post a job with rootFilename pointing to the .obj file.