Not until I started working on this 3D model voting website did I find out that there are so many people building various tools in this field. There are thousands of websites out there, providing millions of 3D models to anyone who are in the need. Basically, you can get access to any models of any themes whenever you want.

However, most of these websites share the same problem: although what they offer are 3D models, what they present on their pages are 2D images. This is the most common way they demonstrate the models:

Face the reality, dude. You have determined yourself to pay $119 for a single model, and the fact is that you would not get the true 3D preview of it until you give them the money.

So here comes the amazingly simple solution, which is also being used in our website, JSC3D, whose homepage is https://code.google.com/p/jsc3d/

A rough demo of it is available on my homepage, http://www.columbia.edu/~fl2335/ . This is an open source project which enables people to present their 3D models in the real 3D way, as user can rotate and zoom in or out the model when viewing. The most fascinating part of this project is that it is really straightforward. It is entirely coded in Javascript, meaning that no other tools or plugins are required for you to view the models or build your own website on it.

What's more? Even the source code is simple! You do not have to read through all the documentations to find the way to use the technology. The modification can be applied mainly on the source code of the webpage, regardless of the back end supports.

On the other hand, there are some drawbacks about this project. The most important aspect is that it only supports two kinds of file formats, .stl and .obj, which means that models made by many mainstream softwares cannot be directly applied. The good news is that the majority of these softwares have the option of "save as .stl". So in our coming website we would probably ask our user to upload .stl files only. Sorry for that.

Anyway, JSC3D provides a rather ideal way to present true 3D models on webpage. Please refer to our coming website to see its application.