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Manual 1.0 Manual 0.9.23
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Importing 3D Resources

Importing 3D Resources

Updated: 12 Jan 2026

Geometry #

Geometry is the fundamental building block for working in 3D. Simply put, geometry is the vertices, edges, polygons and splines which you will use to build your 3D scene, which can then be textured, lit, animated etc.

Notch allows you to import geometry in a huge range of formats so you can import all your pre-existing 3D models and assets from other tools or libraries. It also allows you to create your own geometry inside of Notch, via procedural systems, splines, primitives and deformers etc.

File Types #

Notch allows for the import of the following formats:

  • Lightwave (.LWO)
  • Wavefront (.OBJ)
  • Cinema4D (.C4D)
  • FBX (.FBX)
  • Alembic (.ABC)
  • MDD (.MDD)
  • BVH (.BVH)

Importing 3D Resources #

There are several ways to import geometry to your Notch project:

  • Drag and drop from file explorer directly into the nodegraph. This will create a new node on the nodegraph and add the file to your Resource Browser
  • Right click in your resource browser and choose “Import → 3D” from the menu. This will add the 3D file to your resource browser. From there you can drag it out onto your nodegraph.
  • Choose “Import” form the file menu in the top left of the programme. This will also add your chosen file to the resource browser.

Geometry Requirements and Considerations for Import #

In order to ensure your external geometry works as desired inside of Notch, it is important to make sure it has been prepared correctly and is optimised for use in Notch.

Any meshes should be built using triangles, rather than quads. Notch’s renderers perform all their calculations based on triangles, and so any meshes should be prepared accordingly.

Any geometry imported should have sufficient internal geometry. This means the model should contain enough interior structure or thickness to support believable deformation, shading, simulation, and camera exposure without visual or technical artifacts.

Please also refer to Preparing Assets For Real time for a detailed guide on how to get your imported assets optimised for real-time performance.

Managing and Refining Geometry Resources #

Notch 1.0 Introduced the Inspector window. This window allows you to view, manage and manipulate all of your resources, from videos to geometry.

Changes made here will affect your 3D resource on a resource level. this means that if you adjust something here, for example scale, the scale change will be applied to every instance in your project where that 3D object is used. This is really handy for ensuring a model has imported correctly before using it. See the next section on Geometry Nodes to apply changes to an individual instance of an imported resource.

You can use the resource browser to do several functions to manage your imported geometry:

  • Flatten a 3D scene made of similar objects into one object, or ensure it is treated as a kitbash object. This is a really important and useful function to keep in mind when working with complex 3D scenes. Flattening the resource will ensure that it is treated as one object in Notch, which can massively improve performances compared to objects made of large numbers of parts.
  • Determine how it’s materials are applied. Applying materials as “nodes” will create a node for each material included in your 3D scene. This is useful if you are going to swap or alter the materials of teh object. Applying materials in “properties” will not create nodes, and instead will apply the materials via the properties on the 3D scene node. This is is more performant if you are not looking to alter the materials at all.
  • Scaling the object on a global level. This will scale all instances fo the object across your entire project.
  • Adjusting co-ordinate space. Use this to alter the co-ordinate space on import.
  • Rotating the object.
  • Flipping UVs. This flips the UVs of the object in the V axis.
  • Managing the 3D objects timeline. Trim the start and end time of the object;s timeline.

Another useful feature of the Inspector is that it gives you views to check other aspects of your imported file.

Form the drop down menu in the top of the Inspector’s viewport, you can review normals, tangents, material IDs, object IDs and more.

inspector

Geometry Nodes #

When you drag a geometry resource into your nodegraph, it will appear as either a 3D Scene or a 3D Object node.

These nodes are very similar, but a 3D Scene node can be made up of several 3D Objects.

These nodes allow you to work in your scene. They also give you certain properties that will allow you to edit the geometry on an instance level. Inside of the node’s properties you will find controls including scaling, pivot points, smoothing, subdivisions, reversing normals and more.

Please refer to the node’s individual sections of the manual for an in depth use of their use.

Once you have these geometry nodes in your scene, you can use them in a whole variety of systems. Please also refer to the rest of the Working in 3D section of the manual and the samples inside of Notch Launcher to see creative uses of these nodes.