The model-viewer web component

Adding 3D models to a website can be tricky. 3D models ideally will be shown in a viewer that can work responsively on all browsers - from smartphones, to desktop, to new head-mounted displays. The viewer should support progressive enhancement for performance, rendering quality and use cases on all devices ranging from older, lower-powered smartphones to newer devices that support augmented reality. It should stay up to date with current technologies. It should be performant and accessible. However, building such a viewer requires specialty 3D programming skills, and can be a challenge for web developers that want to host their own models instead of using a third-party hosting service.

To help with that, we're introducing the <model-viewer> web component which lets you declaratively add a 3D model to a web page, while hosting the model on your own site. The web component supports responsive design and use cases like augmented reality on some devices, and we're adding features for accessibility, rendering quality, and interactivity. The goal of the component is making it easy to add 3D models to your website without being on top of the latest changes in the underlying technology and platforms.

What is a web component?

A web component is a custom HTML element built from standard web platform features. A web component behaves for all intents and purposes like a standard element. It has a unique tag, it can have properties and methods, and it can fire and respond to events. In short, you don't need to know anything special to use it. In this article, I will show you some things that are particular to <model-viewer>.

What can <model-viewer> do?

More specifically, what can it do now? I'll show you its current capabilities. You'll get Is a great experience today, and ` will get better over time as we add new features and improve rendering quality. The examples I've provided are just to give you a sense of what it does. If you want to try them there are installation and usage instructions in its GitHub repo.

Basic 3D models

Embedding a 3D model is as simple as the markup below. By using gltf files, we've ensured that this component will work on any major browser.

<model-viewer src="assets/Astronaut.gltf" alt="A 3D model of an astronaut">

To see in action, check out our demo hosted on Glitch. The code we have so far looks something like this png.

By adding two attributes, I can also make the model rotate and allow users to control it.

Poster image/delayed loading

Some 3D models can be very large, so you might want to hold off loading them until the user has requested the model. For this, the component has a built-in means of delaying loading until the user wants it.

<model-viewer src="assets/Astronaut.gltf" controls auto-rotate
poster="assets/poster2.png">

To show your users that it's a 3D model, and not just an image, you can provide some preload animation by using script to switch between multiple posters.

<model-viewer id="toggle-poster" src="assets/Astronaut.gltf" controls
auto-rotate poster="assets/poster2.png"></model-viewer>  
<script>  
    const posters = ['poster.png', 'poster2.png'];  
    let i = 0;  
    setInterval(() =>  
        $('#toggle-poster').setAttribute('poster', `assets/${posters[i++ %
2]}`), 2000);  
</script>

Responsive Design

The component handles some types of responsive design, scaling for both mobile and desktop. It can also manage multiple instances on a page and uses Intersection Observer to conserve battery power and GPU cycles when a model isn't visible.

Looking Forward

Install <model-viewer> and give it a try We want <model-viewer> to be useful to you, and we want your input on its future. That's not to say we don't have ideas, which we have on our project roadmap. So give it a try and let us know what you think by filing an issue in GitHub.

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