Sketchfab – an awesome website for sharing 3D models – just unveiled an option to make files downloadable. All of the files marked for download are available under Creative Commons licenses, including those from some big players like HTC, Microsoft, the British Museum and celebrated designer Francis Bitonti.

From the announcement:

This makes Sketchfab not only the best and easiest way to publish and embed a 3D file, but also a great place to find and use 3D content – for example for 3D printing, to build video games or VR experiments – or just to share and collaborate privately on 3D designs. Any user can now chose to publish 3D content for display only, or for display and download under Creative Commons licenses.

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This launch comes with another important milestone: more than 200,000 3D files have been uploaded on the platform so far, making Sketchfab one of the largest repositories of 3D content, and the leading platform to publish and embed interactive 3D models. We want to thank all of our users for that, we are proud to be home for your work. This milestone, combined with our new download option, is strengthening our position as The place to be for 3D files.

Sketchfab co-founder Alban Denoyel told us that his team knew from the start that they wanted to use CC licenses rather than create a new license for model use. “As soon as we started looking into adding a download option on Sketchfab, we wanted to find a legal framework to cover the way people could use the files, and CC was top of mind as the perfect solution to do that.”

And did the high-profile users like Microsoft and HTC have any qualms about CC? Not really, says Alban. “We had a pretty straightforward approach, exposing our plans of enabling download under CC, and asking if they were in or not. No special concerns were raised, they quickly jumped in!”

Congratulations, Sketchfab!