Integration with Tilt Brush, Tours, Google Blocks, Blender, Unreal Engine 4, and Unity makes Google Poly of exceptional value to many, especially with Poly’s API that allows creators to port their 3D low-poly models to 3D experiences like VRChat, ARize, Mozilla Hubs, and The Wave. It was recently announced that President Erdogan has ordered it converted back to a mosque, limiting public access, making the 3D virtual versions of it precious for educational and historic purposes. The Hagia Sophia Mosque in Istanbul was open for nearly a century as a museum with millions of visitors. The Australian Museum shared their specimens archive storage for students to explore and learn more through these behind-the-scenes tours. Museums, archives, art galleries, and heritage and cultural sites uploaded tours of their facilities and archives for educational and preservation purposes in addition to sharing their archives and artifacts.

Educators encouraged students to upload and share their dimensional creative works as well, sharing between classes and across borders. Many educators were able to find 3D models from around the world to share with students through AR and VR. A petition on is inviting signatures to encourage Google to open source the Poly platform. They are demanding the archive be preserved and continue to be curated in some way. Many artists, creators, educators, researchers, developers, and historians have uploaded “irreplaceable” cultural artifacts to the service and consider it to be a “cultural museum” of 3D and VR history. As a 3D creation and viewer tool, students and educators are easily able to create low-poly objects with in-VR tools and share them with others, expanding the range of 3D objects available for education.

We learned recently that Google Poly would be closing as of June 30, 2021.

Low-poly sketchfab models