// Block 8 of 10 · 19–20 sessions
An AR showcase without special hardware
Your own model in augmented reality on your own phone — via a link or a QR code.
- Duration
- 2 sessions · ~2 h each
- Checkpoint
- The model opens in AR via a link or QR code; shown live “on the table” through the camera.
- Challenge
- Tune the angle and lighting (auto-rotate, camera-orbit) so the model shows its best side right away.
#The idea of the block
Last year “VR” in the club’s program meant a conditional item “if the equipment is available”, dependent on whether there was a headset in the room. This year it is replaced by a concrete, always-available result: augmented reality straight from your phone, no app and no special hardware — just a link or a QR code.
The technical basis is the model-viewer web component (developed by Google): you put a GLB model into an ordinary web page, and on a phone AR mode opens with one tap: Quick Look on iOS, Scene Viewer on Android. That’s how furniture stores offer to “see how this chair will look in your room”.
#Session 19 — model-viewer and the first launch
A page with <model-viewer> is a few lines of HTML, not a program: a web page with a GLB file and a “View in AR” button. The component detects the visitor’s device and picks the right way to show it: Quick Look for iPhone, Scene Viewer for Android, an ordinary rotating view for a computer.
Practice: your own page with a model. Take the .glb file from block 7 and drop it into the ready-made template: the AR showcase template. In pairs if there aren’t enough laptops. The goal of the session is to see your model in the browser and rotate it with the mouse. AR mode on the phone comes next time, once the page is published and available by link: AR needs a real internet address, not just a file on your computer.
#Session 20 — AR on the phone
Warm-up. Make sure the page from last time is published (GitHub Pages) and reachable by link, not just a local file: this is a necessary condition for AR.
The QR code. Make a QR code for your own link (any free generator will do): a convenient way to pass the address to a phone quickly without retyping a long URL. Scan it, press the AR button and place the model “on the table” in the room, walking around it with the camera.
#Common problems
| Problem | Why it happened | The fix |
|---|---|---|
| The AR button doesn’t appear even on a supported phone | The page isn’t published yet (a local file), or the <model-viewer> lacks the ar/ar-modes attribute | Check that the link opens from the internet (https), not from a file on the computer; compare the attributes with the template |
| In AR the model looks huge or tiny compared with real space | The scale wasn’t checked in block 7 | Go back to the N-panel in Blender, check the real Dimensions and re-export |
| The QR code doesn’t scan or leads to an empty page | The QR was generated for a local address (localhost or a file), not for the published link | Generate the QR only after publishing, for the final https://… URL |
#Before the session
- The
.glbfrom block 7 and access to a place to publish (for example, GitHub Pages). - A phone (iOS or Android) with some charge: this is the block’s “equipment”, and everybody already has it.
- Any free QR generator.
- The template is on the AR showcase template page.
