Recent change broke our exporter

[ctech]

A recent change has broken our exporting tool (Earth Volumetric Studio).

It appears you dropped one of the environments - the “studio_02” environment (UUID “efd4ef0fc18a4ec0a1313d782fade965” ) is no longer available on new models.

Our exporter automatically set this environment, as it was the only one that looked reasonable with our scientific models. With this environment unavailable, the API returns an error when existing users try to export to Sketchfab.

Can you please make this environment available again? It looks far superior to the main “studio” environment (the best of the current list) with our style of models, and is better than all of the other models.

In addition, it would be nice if the API wasn’t “all or nothing” - right now, since the environment tag in the JSON fails, nothing is updated. If it would do the other updates except the one that isn’t valid now, it would at least get people most of the way there. Without this, the model that gets uploaded looks very poor by default.

Thank you,
C Tech

[reedcopsey]

There was a recent problem that broke uploading because of zipped WRLs and now this is breaking all uploads. We have been promoting Sketchfab and have a lot of users who pay for this service and depend on it. I hope you will make it a priority to fix this issue.

[james]

The zipped WRL was fixed, right?

VRML no longer supports gzipped WRL

@ctech the problem has been identified and should be fixed next week. I'll get back to you once the fix is live.

I’m sorry about the environment issue. I think you’re using V2 of the API? Using V2 to edit things like the environment was never documented or officially supported.

You can find the legacy environments here, but I’m afraid it won’t work for users who don’t add it to their accounts.

Legacy Environments

Hello everyone, A while ago, we removed some of our default HDRI environments as part of ongoing improvements to the lighting system. Several users have asked if they can still use these environments in their models – for consistency across collections or a desired look. Pro and Business users have the option to upload custom environments, so I'm providing the legacy files here so that you can add them to your account(s). Additionally, although they are no longer in the editor GUI, the d…

[ctech]

James,

Is there any plan to upgrade the v3 API to include some of the 3D settings? We use it whenever possible, but significant portions of what we need is just not possible. The suggestion (and instructions on how) to use V2 came from you, and, at this point, all of our users are unable to export to Sketchfab with all versions of our software because of this change. Most of these are paid (Pro and Business) users of Sketchfab.

In addition, the lack of the old studio_2 environment is a big negative for our users. The new alternatives do not provide the same look or feel as the old environment you included by default. We’d be fine with the environment not being listed, if the UUID was still available, but now that it’s gone, our users are stuck with no direct upload capability, and manual uploading does not give them the ability to make the models look as good as before without manually uploading this environment, and editing a significant amount of settings. Uploading manually also won’t workaround our export issue, as the uuid would no longer match on their account.

[ReedCopseyJr]

As for why we set these up - here is an example.

This is a model out of our exporter:

This is the exact same model when uploaded directly, without being able to set 3D Settings via the v2 API:

The significant color casting, lighting issues, etc make this unusable from a scientific perspective. “Fixing” the model manually via the 3D Settings window is extremely difficult and error prone, as there are many settings which need to be modified.

Without being able to adjust these settings, the usefulness for our users is dramatically hampered.

[james]

I definitely understand the severity of this issue, and I’ll be working to figure out how best to move forward. We hope to add more features to the V3 API, but there’s no clear schedule here yet.

Again, I’m very sorry that this hampers the usability for paying customers. Yes, I did show you how to use V2 to do this. To be fair, I did make it clear that these API calls were undocumented, not officially supported, and subject to change without warning.

[ReedCopseyJr]

To be clear, the problem here isn’t the API, it’s that you removed the environment our users relied upon.

If you put back Studio 2 (or even studio) with the same UUID it had previously, all of our users would be working fine again.

Note that this is an issue separate from any issues with our exporter. None of your current environments are anywhere near as good for our types of models as the old studio_2 one.

[james]

We’ll be looking at putting it back with the same UID - early next week.

[ctech]

Thank you!

[james]

We are able to successfully PATCH a model with the studio_02 environment. It should actually still be there, but hidden in the UI.

Can you give us your code and the error message you receive?

[ctech]

James,

I can now successfully upload and patch the model. Just uploaded this with no errors:

It looks like the environment patch is working properly now again.

Thank you!

[james]

Great! Sorry about all that.