Epic Games shuts down Sketchfab 3D model repository — scientists, museums and artists sound the alarm

Scientists, artists, and archivists are concerned about the closure of Sketchfab, a large repository of free 3D models, and the transfer of content to the Fab marketplace — both owned by Epic Games.

Free content creators are concerned about Epic Games’ licensing policy, format support, and the difficulty of change for some organizations, including academic ones. Closing the repository could disrupt or limit access to hundreds of thousands of free 3D models, which would seriously impact their role in education, research, and archiving.

У Sketchfab stores huge digitized collections and portfolios of many museums, universities, and artists. Many of them signed a petition to preserve the repository. Some have compared its closure to the burning of the Library of Alexandria.

Most people know Epic Games as a game developer and Unreal Engine. In recent years, the company has merged a large number of competitive 3D modeling marketplaces, acquiring Quixel in 2019, as well as ArtStation and Sketchfab in 2021. This month, Epic Games began consolidating all of these separate markets into a single new 3D asset marketplace called Fab.

Sketchfab is no longer accepting applications from new content creators and has invited existing ones to migrate their models to Fab, which was launched last week. Epic Games has not yet specified plans for free and open access 3D models on Sketchfab after 2025, but the company assures that it will provide users with an alternative solution and will notify them in detail about the transition conditions.

Sketchfab users, in particular, are concerned that Fab — is a marketplace designed to generate revenue for Epic Games, while Sketchfab prioritizes open access and the ability to share 3D models for free. One of the key issues is how Fab will handle models under some Creative Commons licenses. Currently, Sketchfab users can only transfer models there under the Creative Commons Attribution license. It allows commercial use as long as the original creator of the model is credited. Models with other Creative Commons licenses, like CC-BY-NC, which only allow non-commercial use of the work, cannot be transferred.

Changing the license will mean that models created as part of scientific or academic research at this time cannot be transferred to Fab. Many organizations have restrictions on the sale and commercial use of scientific data, and a license that allows this in any form is unacceptable to them. Their representatives say that such conditions would effectively eliminate them from the platform. This would make it very difficult to distribute models to everyone.

There is a problem with links on the Internet. Publications such as GigaScience and other scientific journals may lose access to the 3D Sketchfab viewer. They use it to embed content in their articles. The loss of this feature will harm scientific publications — content will not be displayed.

Scientists and museum professionals say that even if Epic Games eventually makes it possible to share these models under unsupported licenses, the transition will be extremely difficult for their institutions. Making any changes is a difficult and time-consuming process for large institutions if it means re-uploading thousands of models, changing API links on hundreds of display servers in museums, etc.

Some common file formats supported by Sketchfab, such as Collada (.dae), cannot currently be ported to Fab. Lighting on some models breaks during migration. One Sketchfab user complains that the vast majority of his 3900 models now appear as dark in Fab.

Epic Games said that the Collada (.dae) format has not received significant updates for many years and is no longer popular because it does not support modern features, and that there are no plans to support it on Fab. The company says that Fab will automatically convert the file to another format. Regarding the lighting failure in some cases during the migration, Epic Games says it has already made improvements.