👀Looking Glass Model Viewer

The Looking Glass Model Viewer allows users to easily import and view 3D models on their Looking Glass displays.

Features

• Support for the full lineup of Looking Glass displays

• Supports gITF, GLB, FBX, OBJ, STL, PLY and STEP (for Windows only) model formats

• 3D cursor controls

• Animation controls

• Load and switch between multiple models

• Explode view (for non-skinned meshes)

• Slice view (for models other than glTF/GLB)

• Hierarchy view with show/hide and highlight controls

Requirements

• Requires connected Looking Glass device

• Supports Windows 10/11, and MacOS (Apple Silicon only)

• We recommend Windows computers with a 3070 or better GPU and MacOS computers with a M2 Pro chip or better

Setup

First, download and run the installers from the downloads page.

As our Model Viewer currently requires a connected Looking Glass display to function correctly, you next need to connect your device. See instructions on how to set up your hardware device here.

Once your device is connected, ensure that Looking Glass Bridge is downloaded and running, and that your displays settings are correct - instructions on Windows are here, and for Mac are here.

When the above is complete, run the app and wait for it to finish launching the Looking Glass view, which may take several seconds.

Using the App

To use the app, select the import button on the left panel. This will open a file browser. Select the 3D model from your hard drive you'd like to load.

Your model will begin loading. When it is finished (assuming there are no errors) you should see the model appear on both your regular monitor and the Looking Glass display.

UI Controls

The loaded model will be added to a dropdown on the left panel - selecting between the models here will change what model is currently active/displayed.

Below that is a dropdown to change the background that is used.

• Box (default): a box-shaped background providing framing and depth cues

• Curved: a curved wall with a texture

• Simple: a flat wall with a drop shadow

• None: a black background

If your imported model has animations, you will see a bar appear on the bottom of the UI with animation controls. The play/pause button will play or pause the animation, and you can change which animation is playing using the dropdown on the right-hand side.

Additionally, there are three sliders on the left panel to control the lighting and framing of your model.

• Background Depth adjusts the distance from the subject of the background

• Light Intensity adjusts the brightness of the scene

• Depth of Field intensity adjusts the amount of blurring applied to content off the focal plane

Below these three sliders are controls tailored to CAD workflows — explode view and slice.

The explode view slider can be used to explode a model with multiple parts. This functionality only supports models that don't use a skinned mesh.

The toggles for slice view can be used to see the internal components of models. You can toggle on each plane individually and then use the revealed slider to adjust how much you're slicing through the content. You can switch the orientation of the slice using the "Flip" toggle. The slicing planes are visualized by default but can be turned off by toggling the "Hide All Planes" toggle.

On the right panel, you have a field that has all the submeshes of your model. Each submesh can be selected to highlight the component (turns it bright green). The eyeball icon can be selected to show or hide a submesh from the list.

Mouse Controls

You can manipulate the 3D scene with mouse input. The mouse input controls are as follows:

• Left click and drag to rotate

• Right click and drag to pan

• Scroll wheel to zoom

• Double left click to set focus (when interacting on the Looking Glass display only)

We recommend using mouse interaction on the Looking Glass display because it is more fluid and gives you better control over the focal point. To do so, move your cursor to the Looking Glass display - you should see a red 3D cursor object appear in the scene.

Support

If you hit any issues, please contact our support team at [email protected].