3d Model Lighting inside PowerPoint

Question

Hello,

Lately Microsoft published guidelines for inserting 3d models into Office applications, here:

https://support.office.com/en-us/article/3d-content-guidelines-for-microsoft-03a7b493-d549-4f1a-9735-f2457adf6261

Thank you for this guide! I've been looking for such guidance for months, and didn't find anything similar. All my knowledge on 3d in PowerPoint was based on trail and error.

However there is one issue that I still cannot find an answer for:  How can I turn OFF the default PowerPoint lighting while inserting a 3d model to PowerPoint?

My 3d models are "baked" meaning that they don't need an extra light, the light is baked into the textures (which is a common practice in all modern computer games) and I just want to turn off that light. So actually what I need is ZERO environment lighting, and have my models show off their baked lighting on the textures. (In some other 3d platforms such as UNITY and UNREAL it is much more complicated - I guess it should be simple here)

By the way - my models look great in Microsoft's 3d Viewer - where I have control over the environment, but when the same model is inserted to PowerPoint - the PowerPoint light "burns" it, by adding light to the pre-baked textures.

I even tried to save them from the 3D viewer - hoping that the light settings will be transferred to PowerPoint, with no luck.

I looked everywhere inside PowerPoint, even found the in the Format tab under material some options that had a little effect on it.

Again I'd like to praise the new guidelines , but at the same time to ask Is there any one who knows who I can ask about this? Or where I can  read about it.

Thanks,

Gidon

Answer 1

Hi Gidon, 

My name is Michelle, and I'm a Program Manager in Office in charge of 3D support. Thanks for reaching out with this issue, and think we have a workaround for you to try, which will disable the document default lighting. There currently isn't any friendly UI to manipulate lights in Office, so we suggest manipulating the XML directly to edit/add/remove lights in a document.

Here are the steps to try:

• Insert a 3D model into a PowerPoint doc (pptx)
• Crack open the .pptx file with an XML editor (or rename the .pptx to .zip and use a normal text editor), find the “ppt/slides/slide[n].xml” doc containing the model
• Find and remove the lighting sections, which will all begin with "am3d:ambientLight" and "am3d:ptLight", for ambient and point lights, respectively.
• Save the changes and rename the .zip file back to .pptx
• Open back up in PowerPoint

We think that if you remove all of the point lights, or the point lights plus the ambient light, then the model will look more like you intended.  The lights are properties of a 3D model, and will stick with the model as it is copied/pasted around between slides or apps, so there isn't a good way to clone these lights to other 3D models with UI.

Here is a link to the XML schema for the am3d namespace (Office Model3D file format) for reference. There is no documentation for the Model3D schema at this site unfortunately.  We did write documentation a couple years ago, but it seems it was not published yet to the official spec for Open Office XML, ECMA-376.  It might be out there in the public domain somewhere, but couldn't find it with a cursory search. 

Please let us know how it goes! 

Regards, 

Michelle

Answer 2

A dedicated 3d PowerPoint forum would be great!  A lot of necessary features, such as controlling lighting and animation, are not yet fully implemented.  3d in PowerPoint simply isn’t anywhere near the level of most WebGL engines so I am learning to embrace current limitations and thinking of creative uses for smaller, less intricate objects.  It would be useful to have a community where tips and tricks could be shared.

For instance: While translation animations are not yet implemented, one can achieve rotation and position and to a degree even scale animations by using a single joint rather than building an entire complex skeleton rig (currently PowerPoint 3D only works with rigged animations).

And thank you Michelle Maislen for the incredible tip about editing the slide XML to remove lighting!  Not only is that possible but I found one can also edit light intensity and even have different intensity values animated from one slide to the next using the Morph transition (cumbersome to set up – the object with different lighting has to be copied to a separate PowerPoint, its XML edited, and then that object needs to be pasted back into the original presentation where the Morph is to occur).  But it does work as along as the 3D objects are identical and named the same.

Haven’t figured out how to change light color yet, if that is possible.  I do see XML nodes that contain RGB numbers but not sure how to adjust them.

Answer 3

Hi Gidon,

The forum software is kind of hyperactive when it comes to protecting email addresses. 

This will probably get asteriskticated:  nobody.special@example.com

But as a rule, unless the software's gotten even more semi-intelligently annoying, this will survive:  nobody.special at-sign example dot com

The latter leaves it up to the reader to reconstruct a proper email address but at least it gives them half a chance.

example.com, example.net, example.org are all domain names that are reserved for test purposes; they cannot be registered.  Anything sent there goes directly into the bitbucket.

Answer 4

Hi, I think your mail was removed by the forum.

You can reach out to me by looking for Koomkoom Multimedia, or by this mail (hope it will not be erased): ******@koomkoom.com

Thanks again

Gidon