Google Drive or Digital Asset Management (DAM) - Which one’s the better fit for storing your business’ 3D assets? Can Google double as a 3D DAM? And does it pack all the features you need? Let’s dive into these questions to help you pick the perfect solution for managing your 3D digital assets.

Google Drive is a great cloud storage service for digital assets such as pictures and videos, but it’s not a great tool for managing 3D assets. Google Drive isn’t designed for managing such digital assets and doesn’t offer many of the tools a business would need to effectively handle its 3D models.

Both Google Cloud and most DAM platforms are cloud-based. This allows teams to work together remotely. But Google Drive wasn’t designed specifically for creative 3D projects in mind. It lacks in 3D file support as well as control features offered by 3D DAM platforms like echo3D, including asset hierarchy, duplicate asset detection, polygon count, approval processes, and version control.

A 3D-first DAM takes better care of 3D assets and is more efficient, collaborative, and useful for team working with 3D models. The right 3D DAM platform allows you to take control over your business 3D content — to securely store and share 3D assets across your organization, while allowing teams to manage their interactive content and to discover, process, and stream 3D assets across their organization and beyond.

Google drive will show you pictures and videos but note 3D assets. echo3D allows you to see your 3D models, edit them, convert them to different formats, and view them in augmented reality. A business can store, manage, and edit all its 3D content in one simple interface, organized into projects. With echo3D, it can also search for, upload, and retrieve 3D assets and share them within the organization.

While Google Drive offers secure storage that can be shared with others (with permission levels such as Viewer, Commenter, and Editor), the right 3D DAM can offer much more control. For example, unless a team member is added to Google Drive as an owner, link sharing will only work if it is turned on for each individual file the user would like to access. The right DAM platform will allow you to collaborate with your team through the cloud and easily share and comment on 3D models, with share linking made easy.

A DAM platform allows you to assign different roles and permissions to team members to view, upload, edit, and share 3D content and to coordinate the overall 3D content release process. Set user and group settings and permissions (including creating user groups, projects for groups, granting group/project/role based access) and maintain access permissions and access control (e.g., approvals for access requests). The right DAM platform should offer a business that has a large 3D library collaboration tools, access permission tools, versioning and reporting tools.

While Google Drive lets users sort files into folders, A DAM should also offer smart tagging and metadata settings. It makes managing, updating, and sharing 3D content easy for your team as well as delivering and sharing your 3D asset library within your organization in real-time.

Google drives allows you to search for files based on file names and keywords. The right DAM platform offers advanced search, filters, Thumbnails for 3D assets, auto-tagging, and tag and metadata search. echo3D even offers a library of more than 800k free 3D models if you can’t find the asset you’re looking for.

With echo3D organizations can manage, process & stream their 3D content in real-time & across different devices and headsets. Its cutting-edge 3D compression tools easily reduce the size of your 3D models without losing resolution quality. You can simply store, transfer, and display 3D assets for real-time rendering on devices with limited resources.

It even offers advanced 3D version control so teams can save new versions and restore 3D models back to previous versions in real-time through the cloud. You can effectively manage 3D content within your organization and create multiple versions to choose from.

A 3D DAM also offers real-time analytics, allowing your business to learn how users interact with your 3D assets and engage them with the 3D content they want. It offers detailed analytics on every asset to discover insights on your users behavior within and outside your organization. You understand what different audience segments find most intriguing, to make for a curated and unforgettable 3D experience.

Google Drive is one of the most popular cloud storage services but it only offers the basics when it comes to 3d asset management and sharing.

A 3D DAM like echo3D is an ideal alternative to Google Drive for business with 3D content. Today, teams struggle to manage and update their 3D libraries and collaborate across their organization, resulting in time and resources wasted. Teams suffer from inefficient workflows, are unable to discover existing content and even spend money on incompatible 3D asset and asset duplicates. The right DAM solution offers a centralized system to secure and share optimized 3D content across your organization, which allows for:.

• Easy Set Up: Integrate a 3D DAM into your existing workflow and allow your time to store, access, and handle massive amounts of digital files.
• Cross-platform Compatibility: Use one platform-agnostic solution to share different 3D assets everywhere online (web, mobile, AR smart glasses and VR headsets).
• Access Control: Grant access to multiple team members as well as external partners and clients while keeping your 3D content safe.
• Multi-file Format Support: Convert 3D models, images, and videos to & from multiple formats for all devices.
• Low Data & Latency: Dynamically stream compressed & poly-reduced 3D assets in different network conditions and dramatically reduce latency.

We believe that 3D digital asset management should be simple, and so we built echo3D — a platform that helps businesses maximize the value of their 3D content.

Want to learn more about echo3D? Try it for free! Create an account now or talk to us and schedule a demo to learn more about our 3D DAM platform.