I have some very exciting announcements this morning. Basically, thanks to generous support from LulzBot and one awesome MediaGoblin contributor Aeva Ntsc, we now have 3d model support in MediaGoblin! This awesome news means that MediaGoblin becomes more useful for 3d artists and is well on its way for those looking for a free software, customizable alternative to something like Thingiverse! (Goblinverse??)

I have plenty more to say, but demonstrations speak louder than words, so check out this video:

HTML5 video.

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Thrilling stuff, right? What’s also thrilling is just how fast this all came together. Last Sunday Jeff Moe of LulzBot made a generous donation to MediaGoblin’s campaign and said that whoever added 3d model support to MediaGoblin would get their LulzBot AO-100 3d printer as a reward (which, by the way, is the first ever FSF certified piece of hardware). Before we could even make a public announcement, Aeva blasted through the implementation… in just two nights! It’s pretty cool… it uses Blender to render the stills and has a WebGL browser preview using thingiview.js (an LGPLv3 based JavaScript library). Anyway. Thrilling stuff.

I think this news was exciting for everyone, but especially for me! When I give talks about MediaGoblin I frequently say “the media types layer is extensible, so you could even add support for something like 3d model support if you wanted to.” I didn’t expect us to get this so soon… I guess I’ll have to come up with a new line. I guess that’s the best kind of problem to have!

Code is not yet merged into master but you can check it out here if curious. We are hoping it should land in the next release.

Oh, and did I mention that we’re running this crowdfunding campaign? Every bit helps, and we’ve still got a ways to go! Contributions are currently being doubled… so your support is welcome. And tell a friend! The world’s most beautiful media publishing future is counting on *you*!