The Cesium ion 3ds Max plugin enables you to effortlessly export your models to your Cesium ion account and stream 3D Tiles to CesiumJS and other applications.

Leveraging Cesium ion and the power of 3D Tiles, even multi-gigabyte models can be streamed to any device without having to download the entire tileset up front. By visualizing 3D Tiles with CesiumJS, you can fuse your models with other datasets, add geospatial context to place it at a real world location, or overlay additional details and analysis.

Learn more at https://cesium.com.

Kokura Castle (left) loaded into 3ds Max and (right) fused with Cesium World Terrain and imagery in CesiumJS after being tiled with ion.

The plugin can be installed by downloading and running the installer from the Autodesk App Store.

Cesium ion 3ds Max plugin on Autodesk App Store

For development, see Developer Guide

3ds Max starts with an empty scene. You can load your own models at this time if you would like to export one of your own works.

To export your model to Cesium ion go to File > Export > Export to Cesium ion....

The first time you use the plugin, you will need to authorize the plugin to access your Cesium ion account. The plugin automatically launches the browser page. You may be asked for your name and password. If you are already logged in, a permissions window similar to the one below will appear immediately.

Click Allow, and the next page will confirm that permission has been granted. You can close your browser window and return to 3ds Max.

The Cesium ion exporter window in 3ds Max will look like:

• Name: (Required) A name for the ion asset you are uploading.
• Description: An optional description.
• Attribution: Any attribution you would like to appear when this asset is loaded into client visualization engines.
• Model Type: (Required) A hint to ion about the type of model you are uploading. For most 3ds Max models, select 3D Model. If you are loading a mesh that originated from a 3D scan, LIDAR, or photogrammetry processes, select 3D Capture instead. To host a model on Cesium ion as glTF, without tiling it into 3D Tiles, choose 3D Model (convert to glTF).
• Use WebP images: If enabled, will produce a tileset with WebP images, which are typically 25–34% smaller than equivalent JPEG images, leading to faster streaming and reduced data usage. 3D Tiles produced with this option requires a client that supports the glTF EXT_texture_webp extension, such as CesiumJS 1.54 or newer, and a browser that supports WebP, such as Chrome or Firefox 65 and newer.
• Export only selected: If selected, only selected objects will be uploaded.

Next click Upload to Cesium ion

At this point a progress bar will appear and the model will be uploaded to Cesium ion.

When the upload is completed, 3ds Max will launch Cesium ion where you can view the asset in the ion dashboard.

Congratulations! You have successfully published your first 3ds Max model to Cesium ion!

Cesium ion requires all Autodesk materials to be baked to textures. If on Cesium ion the materials are not rendered correctly, you will need to bake the materials to textures in 3ds Max before exporting.

Follow the Workflow: Texture Baking by Autodesk guide from Autodesk to bake the materials to textures.

Interested in contributing? See CONTRIBUTING.md. ❤️