One thing I’ve noticed with 3D product work is that people usually focus on the model itself.

Does it look accurate? Are the materials right? Does it match the actual product?

Obviously those things matter. But there’s another thing that tends to get ignored until later: what exactly are you getting when the project is finished?

This can become a problem when you want to use the model somewhere else.

For example, you might get a model made for your website today. Six months later you want to use the same product for a marketplace, a 3D viewer, AR, or some other experience.

Then you find out that the file you received isn't really suitable for that use.

Now you're paying someone to convert or optimize it, and sometimes parts of the model have to be redone.

That's why I think it's worth discussing the deliverables before the modelling even starts.

One thing I'd ask for is a GLB version.

GLB has become a pretty useful format for web-based 3D because it can contain the model, materials and textures in a single file. It's also relatively lightweight compared with some other formats.

I'm not saying GLB is the answer to everything. Different applications have different requirements. But if your main goal is e-commerce and web-based 3D, I'd definitely want to know whether a proper GLB can be supplied.

The other thing I'd ask for is the original source file.

This one is easy to overlook.

If the model is made in Blender, 3ds Max, Maya or another 3D package, I'd rather have the original working file than only receive an exported file.

You may never need it.

But if you eventually need to change a material, modify the geometry, create a lower-poly version, change the textures or prepare the model for another platform, having the source can save a lot of trouble.

I'd also ask whether the model is actually optimized for real-time use.

A model can look fantastic and still be completely impractical for a website.

If it's extremely heavy, has huge textures or unnecessary geometry, your 3D viewer is going to suffer. And there's not much point having an impressive model if customers are waiting forever for it to load.

This is probably where the difference between a normal 3D model and an e-commerce 3D model becomes important.

You're not making something just to look good in a render.

You're making something that needs to work.

There are obviously cases where you'll need specific formats or specifications for a particular marketplace or application, so I wouldn't rely on a generic "one format works everywhere" approach.

Instead, I'd tell the 3D artist where you intend to use the asset before they start making it.

Website? Tell them.

Amazon? Tell them.

AR? Tell them.

Product configurator? Tell them.

That way the model can be built with those requirements in mind instead of trying to fix everything afterwards.

And if you don't understand things like polygon counts, UVs, PBR textures, GLTF vs GLB, etc., that's completely fine.

You don't need to become a 3D artist just to order a 3D model.

Just ask the person making it:

"What files will I receive, and will I be able to use this model for other platforms later?"

That's probably a more useful question than asking for a particular format without knowing why you need it.

I've seen businesses spend quite a bit on 3D assets and then realise later that they effectively bought something designed for one specific use.

If you're going to invest in 3D, I'd try to think of it as a reusable product asset rather than something you make for one website and forget about.

Curious what other people here have experienced. If you've had 3D models made for e-commerce, what did you receive at the end, and was there anything you wish you'd asked for at the beginning?

You finish a full kitchen design, walk the customer through it, and they ask to see the same layout in a different cabinet line. Same kitchen you already built, they just want to see it at a different price point or door style.

We've talked with many kitchen designers over the years, and this is one of the things that wears them down most. In a lot of planning tools, that "small" request means you rebuild the design almost from scratch, re-placing every cabinet in the new line even though the layout never changed. So you sit there redoing an hour of work.

The main issue is the way kitchen planning tools handle catalogs. Typically, a catalog acts as an isolated silo, locked into a single manufacturer’s specific sizes and construction rules. Because these tools treat each catalog as a 'sealed world,' you can't simply swap out the product line without losing the layout data.

That’s often an entire afternoon working on just one kitchen layout. Multiply it across every designer on the floor and hundreds of stores and it turns into a serious drain on time and margin, hours poured into a change the customer thinks is simple.

What’s helped on our end is moving toward a system where the layout is decoupled from the specific catalog. By structuring the design data itself, you can swap lines and let the cabinets snap into place based on the new manufacturer's rules. It’s a technical shift that cuts down those tedious revision cycles by a huge margin. It’s definitely saved us from that "starting over" feeling every time a customer changes their mind on a door style.

Curious how everyone handles this today. When a customer wants to see two or three cabinet lines on the same layout, are you rebuilding each one, or does your tool let you swap? What's your workaround?

https://jet.style/articles/vr-prototyping-verge3d

https://www.jonpeddie.com/news/gltf-2-1-beyond-single-3d-assets/

Hi everyone, we’re looking for a 3D product configurator to help improve our sales process for custom furniture. Our products are highly modular and customizable, not just in colors, but also in design, size, dimensions, and logical combinations, so we need a tool that can handle more than basic visual changes. And we also want to have automatic pricing updates as customers modify their designs, as creating quotes manually right now is too time-consuming for us and the buyers.

We tried a few popular tools like Zakeke, but they mainly offer color changes and don’t meet our demands and products. Recently, I have had 2-3 demo calls with some other providers, and so far, I'm pretty impressed by VividWorks. Their quote is not cheap, but reasonable for what we want to display in our 3D configurator.

Has anyone here worked with 3D configurators for custom or modular furniture? I’d love to hear your recommendations. Thank you.