Import and View Scanned Sculptures in Blender

Click to download .blend file. Note: sculptures must be downloaded separately.

A number of websites, such as Sketchfab have large collections of freely downloadable sculptures for one’s enjoyment. However it is not always easy to view them in a way fitting for their quality, especially if one lacks experience with Blender, or similar software.

In order to use this file, I am not assuming you have any prior experience with Blender, so everything will be explained below.

This .blend file contains everything you need to automatically import, transform, texture and render downloaded sculptures in a way that aims to diminish their beauty as little as possible, with options for various materials and environments. In it are textures and a script, but they are all stored internally in the file, so you do not need to download anything other than the .stl or .obj file containing the sculpture.

Instructions

Import

1. Download the view-sculpture.blend file from the top of the page.

2. Open view-sculpture.blend in Blender. If needed, download Blender from https://www.blender.org/download/

3. In the pop-up, choose “Allow Execution”. This is the script that creates the panel that you will use to import and style your sculpture.

4. In the main viewport, there will be options for importing and styling the scene. Click the relevant import button and choose your sculpture file.

   • If your file is not a .stl file or .obj file, use the standard import options in Blender, found at top left: File → Import -> <your file type>. Then, with the sculpture selected (if it is not outlined, left-click it), choose a material from the “Material” dropdown, and then click “Transform model”.
   • If the model is not oriented upright, then select the model (if it is not outlined, left-click it), then press r to rotate it, pressing x, y or z to specify the axis of rotation, and typing the number of degrees you wish to rotate the object, probably 90, 180 or 270. Then, press “Transform model”.

Your Blender window should now look something like this:

Viewing

5. Change the Workspace (window configuration) to “Cinematic” or “Standard” from the top (“Shading” is currently selected).

   • If you selected “Cinematic”, then press g to move the focal point of the camera (left-clicking will confirm the translation). The focal point will move to the surface underneath the cursor. Note that if the camera is below the floor, then the focal point will snap to the floor instead of the sculpture, so you must navigate the camera above the floor (see step 7). Right-clicking will cancel the operation. If something else was selected (e.g. the sculpture), go back to the “Shading” view and in the top-right corner, from the list of objects in the scene, click on “FocusPoint”, which is at, or near the bottom of the list.
   • If you selected “Standard”, then you may need to change the viewport to rendered. To do so, press and hold z, then from move your mouse towards “Rendered” and release z.

6. From the “Shading” Workspace, choose a combination of environment and material from the corresponding dropdown menu in the panel on the right. Note, you will need the sculpture selected before choosing a material from the dropdown. To do this, left-click the sculpture. You can check if the sculpture is selected by looking for the orange outline in the “Shading” workspace. After switching materials, reselect the “FocusPoint” following the instructions in Step 5.

7. To navigate around the sculpture:

8. To render the sculpture (i.e. create an image), select the “Cinematic” workspace, position the “Focus Point” and camera using the instructions. When you are ready, press F12, then to save it, choose “Image” from the top left, and click “Save As”. Alternatively, press “Shift+Alt+s”.

2023-07-06