360° product viewer
A 360° product viewer that renders a real model rather than replaying photographs — so the camera can go anywhere the shopper’s doubt is, and the same asset carries straight into AR.
Three different things, one name
Worth knowing which one a vendor is quoting you for, because the cost, the build time and the ceiling are completely different.
Twenty-four to seventy-two photographs of the product on a turntable, played back as the user drags. Real photography, so materials look exactly right — but it is a fixed orbit at a fixed height, it cannot be relit, it cannot go into AR, and reshooting is the only way to change anything.
One glTF/GLB model rendered live in the browser on WebGL. Free orbit, free zoom, any angle rather than a fixed ring, hotspots anchored to real geometry, and the same asset feeds AR, configuration and marketing renders.
A turntable clip. Cheap, plays anywhere, and completely passive — the shopper cannot inspect the part they are actually unsure about, which is the whole reason they came.
What you get
A spin set gives one horizontal orbit. Real-time 3D lets a buyer look underneath a chair, behind a hinge, or straight down at a worktop — the angles that actually answer their question.
Annotations attach to a point on the mesh and stay attached as the model turns, so "this is the soft-close mechanism" points at the mechanism from every angle.
Geometry goes through Draco compression and textures through KTX2 (Basis Universal) supercompression, which is what keeps a product in the megabytes rather than the tens of megabytes on mobile data.
The same GLB drives the viewer, the AR step, the configurator and the still renders used in marketing. You model once.
It sits in the gallery slot on the PDP rather than behind a lightbox on a microsite, so it is part of the buying flow instead of a novelty.
A poster image renders immediately for crawlers and for anyone on a slow connection, and keyboard users can orbit without a mouse.
Hands-on pages
Shoppers spin, zoom and configure instead of scrolling past photos.
3D on every listing
Each product page carries a 3D view shoppers can open, spin and zoom.
One model, every variant
A single 3D asset renders each colour, finish and angle. A new variant needs no new shoot.
FAQ
Last reviewed 2026-09-19.
A 360° product viewer is an interactive element on a product page that lets a shopper rotate a product and inspect it from any angle, instead of scrolling through a handful of fixed photographs. It can be built from a photographic spin set or, as Thridify does it, from a real-time 3D model rendered in the browser.
In everyday use the two terms mean the same thing, and most people searching for one will accept the other. The meaningful distinction is technical: a photographic 360° spin set replays images along one fixed orbit, while a 3D product viewer renders an actual model, so the camera can go anywhere and the same asset can also drive AR and configuration.
It does if the assets are not prepared properly — uncompressed textures are the usual cause of a 3D page that feels broken on a phone. A poster image should paint first so the page is usable immediately, with the model streaming in behind it, and geometry and textures should be compressed (Draco and KTX2) before they are served.
Neither, if you use a modelling service. Thridify builds photoreal glTF/GLB and USDZ assets from your photographs, dimensions and drawings, and you own the files. If your products are already designed in CAD, that source can often be used directly.
A real-time 3D viewer can, because there is an actual model behind it — the same GLB opens in Scene Viewer on Android and, as USDZ, in AR Quick Look on iOS. A photographic spin set cannot, because there is no geometry to place in a room.
In the main gallery, as one of the media items a shopper already swipes through. Burying it below the fold or behind a separate tab is the most common reason a 3D viewer gets low engagement.
See it on your products
