September 18, 2024. For thousands of cultural heritage professionals, researchers, and institutions around the world, this date marked more than just another Wednesday. It was the day Sketchfab—the beloved platform that had hosted millions of 3D cultural heritage models—announced its transition to Epic Games’ Fab marketplace, effectively ending its role as the go-to solution for sharing 3D heritage content.

The email was brief, almost casual: “We’re excited to share that Fab—Epic’s new digital marketplace—will launch in mid-October…” But for the cultural heritage community that had built years of work on the platform, the implications were staggering. One frustrated user captured the sentiment perfectly, calling it “the virtual equivalent of burning the Library of Alexandria.”

From Revolution to Reality Check

To understand why this announcement sent shockwaves through the heritage community, we need to look back at what Sketchfab represented. Launched in 2012 by three French entrepreneurs frustrated with the inability to easily share 3D work online, Sketchfab became the first platform to offer seamless 3D model embedding across websites and social media.

For cultural heritage, this was revolutionary. Suddenly, museums like the British Museum and the Louvre could share 3D models of their collections with global audiences. Archaeological teams could make their discoveries accessible to researchers worldwide. Small heritage projects could showcase their work alongside major institutions. By 2019, Sketchfab celebrated hosting 100,000 cultural heritage models, with nearly 20,000 available under Creative Commons licenses.

The platform’s appeal was simple: it just worked. No need to understand JavaScript or 3D rendering. No server setup required. Just upload, customize, and embed. This plug-and-play approach made 3D sharing accessible to institutions and researchers without extensive technical expertise.

But the recent transition to Fab—which requires models to be sold rather than freely shared—highlights a crucial problem: the cultural heritage sector’s dangerous dependence on commercial platforms that can change their business models at any time.

The Hidden Costs of Convenience

The Sketchfab situation isn’t unique. We’ve seen this before with other platforms that the heritage community embraced:

• Metaio (AR platform) was acquired by Apple in 2015 and shut down

• Second Life ended educational discounts in 2010, pricing out many institutions

• Various social media platforms have repeatedly changed their terms, affecting how cultural content can be shared

Each time, the pattern is the same: a commercial platform initially welcomes the cultural sector, builds a community, then pivots to serve more lucrative markets. The heritage community is left scrambling to preserve years of work and find alternatives.

What We’re Really Losing

The impact goes beyond just moving files from one platform to another. Our recent research, based on surveys of heritage professionals, focus groups, and extensive literature review, reveals what’s truly at stake:

Community and Connection

Sketchfab wasn’t just a hosting service—it was a community. Users could follow creators, comment on models, create collections, and discover new work. This social aspect fostered collaboration and knowledge-sharing across institutions and geographic boundaries.

Accessibility for Everyone

The platform’s free tiers and institutional support made 3D sharing accessible to small museums, individual researchers, and projects with limited budgets. Many users expressed concerns about alternatives that might price out smaller institutions or individual creators.

Technical Simplicity

Perhaps most importantly, Sketchfab solved a complex technical problem with elegant simplicity. While alternatives exist, none have matched its combination of ease-of-use and functionality. Many existing 3D viewers require technical expertise that many heritage professionals simply don’t have.

The European Opportunity

Ironically, this crisis arrives at an opportune moment. The European Union is making unprecedented investments in digital heritage infrastructure through initiatives like:

• The Common European Data Space for Cultural Heritage

• The Collaborative Cloud for Cultural Heritage

• The TwinIt! campaign promoting 3D digitization

Meanwhile, growing interest in virtual reality and the metaverse is driving increased demand for 3D heritage content. The question isn’t whether we need better infrastructure for 3D cultural heritage—it’s what that infrastructure should look like.

Building for the Future: What We Actually Need

Through extensive research involving surveys, focus groups, and analysis of user needs, we’ve identified the key requirements for future 3D heritage infrastructure:

1. Robust 3D Viewing Capabilities

Users need more than basic zoom and rotate functions. Advanced features like:

• Analytical tools (measurements, cross-sections, dynamic lighting)

• Annotation systems that can link to external sources and accept multiple contributors

• Storytelling features that help contextualize objects

• Quality rendering with physically-based materials and lighting

2. Transparent Documentation

Heritage 3D work requires:

• Metadata standards that make objects discoverable and reusable

• Paradata documentation explaining how models were created and what decisions were made

• Version control to track changes and improvements over time

• Citation systems that enable proper academic attribution

3. Community and Collaboration

Successful platforms need:

• User profiles and collections to build community connections

• Collaboration tools for team projects

• Moderated commenting and sharing to maintain quality while enabling engagement

• Integration with social media and websites for broader reach

4. Flexible Access and Licensing

Different institutions have different needs:

• Multiple licensing options from fully open to restricted access

• Granular permissions for different types of use

• Download capabilities for various file formats

• Educational and institutional support to ensure accessibility

5. Long-term Sustainability

Perhaps most critically:

• Open-source foundations to avoid vendor lock-in

• Distributed architecture to prevent single points of failure

• Community governance to ensure user needs drive development

• Preservation strategies to protect content for the long term

Three Paths Forward

Based on our analysis, we see three potential models for the future:

The Discovery Platform

A lightweight solution focused on finding and viewing 3D content, while leaving preservation to specialized repositories. Think of it as a “Google for 3D heritage” that connects users to content stored elsewhere.

The Community Platform

Building on Sketchfab’s social aspects while adding scholarly features. This would prioritize user engagement and community building while incorporating the research tools academics need.

The Integrated Platform

A comprehensive solution that combines discovery, viewing, analysis, and preservation in one system. This would be the most ambitious option but could provide the most value for users.

Making It Happen

The technical challenges are solvable. We have the frameworks (like 3DHOP, Voyager, and ATON) and the expertise. What we need is:

Collaboration across sectors. This can’t be solved by any one institution or country. We need museums, universities, tech companies, and government agencies working together.

User-centered design. Too many digital humanities tools are built by technologists for technologists. We need platforms designed around how heritage professionals actually work.

Sustainable funding. This requires long-term commitment, not just project-based funding that disappears after a few years.

Community governance. Following models like the Principles of Open Scholarly Infrastructure, we need transparent governance that puts user needs first.

A Call to Action

The end of Sketchfab as we knew it doesn’t have to be a disaster—it can be an opportunity. But only if we act quickly and decisively.

The cultural heritage community has spent over two decades dealing with the same problems: fragmented infrastructures, non-interoperable systems, and dependence on commercial solutions that don’t prioritize our needs. We can continue this cycle, or we can build something better.

The question isn’t whether we can create a sustainable alternative to Sketchfab—it’s whether we have the will to do it.

The European investments in digital heritage infrastructure provide unprecedented resources. The growing demand for 3D content creates market pressure for solutions. The technical expertise exists across our institutions.

What we need now is coordination, commitment, and the courage to think beyond short-term fixes toward long-term solutions that will serve heritage communities for decades to come.

The future of 3D cultural heritage is too important to leave to the whims of commercial platforms. It’s time to build infrastructure we can trust.

This blog post is based on the research article “And Now What? Three-Dimensional Scholarship and Infrastructures in the Post-Sketchfab Era” published in Heritage journal, March 2025. The research was conducted by the PURE3D project team at Maastricht University through surveys, focus groups, literature review, and analysis of community responses to Sketchfab’s transition.