Do you remember that 3D Objects folder that showed up in Windows 10 one day? And a lot of
people were confused, what was it for? For 99% of people, it probably remained empty forever.
And then eventually they took it out before it even got into Windows 11. I thought it would be
fun to just kind of talk a little bit about it. What was the purpose of it? And why did
Microsoft add it in the first place? Basically, this 3D Object showed up in the Windows 10 Creator
Update [1703]. So it was in 2017. And it showed up in the C:/Users/WhateverUserName, and then 3D
Objects. And it even got its own special icon like some of the other folders. Interestingly though,
even though the 3D Objects folder was removed before Windows 11, I believe it was removed in
2021. Actually, Windows 11 does have a special folder icon for the 3D Objects folder. And it's
different than the old one. I think it actually looks pretty cool. It's just not many people
are going to ever see it. It turns out you can actually add back the 3D Objects folder even on
Windows 11 so that it shows up in the Home area of Windows Explorer. You just have to use a certain
registry key. But oddly enough, you still have to actually create the folder in the user's directory
for that to even work. So now on to why this thing existed. And basically at the time, Microsoft,
I believe, was really pushing for Windows "Mixed Reality." That was like their flavor of the month.
And you might remember that they created a bunch of mixed reality headsets. I believe one was with
Lenovo and a couple other companies. They were trying to make these affordable, relatively cheap
headsets that were kind of like a cheaper version of Oculus VR. It'd be more focused on using at
like a desk and stuff. So they were cheaper, but it really didn't catch on, obviously. And it was
kind of cool, in that if you got one of these, I did, you kind of had this special like house you
could walk around in, like a virtual environment, and then run programs from within there. It was
actually kind of fun, just not very practical. So I guess Microsoft thought that mixed reality
and VR in general was going to be a big thing. So they kind of planned for it and expected people
to start creating 3D models and stuff, just like they might create videos and pictures. Of course,
that never really panned out. However, at the same time that they released the creator's update,
they actually released a couple really cool apps that are still around today that you can use. One
was called Paint 3D, well, is called Paint 3D, and the other one is 3D Viewer. You can still get
these from the Microsoft Store. I don't know how often they update them, but they still do work.
Paint 3D is kind of like the 3D equivalent of Microsoft Paint. It's pretty basic, but I guess
they figured this is where people could kind of get started just testing out 3D stuff, and then
it would go into the 3D Objects folder. And you can see how this works. You can create
primitive shapes pretty easily, like the square, the triangle. It's pretty intuitive. You can orbit
around and manipulate different points. Like if you draw this squiggly 3D tube thing, you can
then pull on the different points, move them in different directions, depending on how the camera
is oriented. And it works pretty much like you'd expect. It does contain a big library of a bunch
of different sample objects if you want to just kind of mess around with them. And it actually
also lets you even apply textures to them in the form of "stickers", I think they're called, but
probably other images too. So it lets you do quite a bit, but still nothing compared to Blender, of
course, or a 3D modeling software like Substance 3D, I think is Adobe's one. It's pretty basic, but
I mean, so is Microsoft Paint. So I'm not really sure who the target audience was for this because
a professional would of course be using one of those professional programs. And I don't think the
average person ever interacts with 3D Objects, let alone needs to create one. Though I guess if they
were expecting mixed reality and 3D to become a thing, they thought that might happen more
often. The other software they released, which again is still available, is called 3D Viewer.
And this one's a lot more straightforward. It's for viewing 3D Objects. This also has a pre-made
library of a bunch of objects you can look at. I guess this one is kind of more practical because
it theoretically is possible you'd come across 3D Objects you want to be able to at least open, but
still how often does that really happen? Still, it does have some cool features. For example,
you can adjust the lighting and the color of lighting. So they call these themes. So you
can see how different lighting might affect the way the reflections or whatever look, or just the
object looks in general. You can also see more advanced information in the section called Stats
and Shading, such as viewing it in wireframe. You can see the number of triangles and vertices,
that sort of thing. I figure maybe if you work with 3D Objects every once in a while, this might
be a good lightweight option, if you just want to kind of open it up and see what it is basically
without opening up a big giant heavy program that might take a while. This could potentially be a
good option. I don't know what kind of file format support it has, but it might be worth looking at
if you do this sort of thing relatively often. Beyond that though, there's not really much more
to say about why these were added and then removed beyond just the fact that they never really took
off. I would like to know what you guys think. Did you ever use the 3D Objects folder for any
reason? Or did you maybe use it just at the beginning and then never again? We could talk
about that down in the comments. If you liked this video, definitely give it a big giant thumbs up
and let me know if you also want me to do more of these like short little discussion videos,
not as long as previous ones. If you want to keep watching, the next video I'd recommend is where I
talked about some cool Chrome flag settings that you might want to change. I'll put that link
right there you can click on. So thanks so much for watching and I'll see you in the next one.