UPDATED: Play Animated 3D Models in Word, PowerPoint, and *Excel*

If the library of Microsoft Animated models fails to provide you enough options you can always try SketchFab.  They have monthly plans (which are rather expensive) but you can also purchase models individually for as low as $3 or $4.  There are also other sites that offer animated 3D models, many of them for free (Turbosquid,)

Another option would be to join an Adobe / Algorithmic Substance 3D subscription, which is just $20 a month.  Substance Launcher gives you pretty much full access to download a lot of SketchFab models (not all are animated).  You could even bring these into Substance Painter if you wanted to modify the textures. 

A few things to be aware of with any of these options though:

For animated models I believe the only format that works in PowerPoint is gLTF.  But you need to make sure these are converted to the self-contained binary .glb format as PowerPoint will not import the Jason gltf files.

You can use the very free and powerful Blender  (Mac / Windows) to import gltf files and export to glb.   On Windows there is the free Visual Studio Code editor or much more simple to use is Windows’ included 3D Viewer. Depending on the complexity of your model and its animation your mileage may vary on how successful such conversions to .glb will look and work in PowerPoint.

Another crucial technical detail to using animated models in PowerPoint is that the files MUST have been animated with bones as opposed to standard keyframing.  PowerPoint STILL does not support basic transform animations and so simple things such as rotate and scale will not work unless they are animated through an armature system (which is usually used for character rigging). This is not a problem if you just want to animate a still model with such basic transforms using PowerPoint's morph transition or their built in basic 3D animation behaviors.  

A real shame Microsoft dropped the ball with 3D in PowerPoint over the last several years by simply NOT developing it further.  A lot more can be done to provide presentation designers and 3D artists better flexibility if Microsoft provided additional hooks into asset creation & manipulation.

Hi Aimee,

Node animations can be refactored as skeletal animations, however, morph animations cannot (or at least are extremely difficult and require a huge number of bones). Having Office 365 support both would be extremely useful.

Hello Animated Model users. 

Unfortunately only skeletal animations are supported, and there are no longer plans to support node and morph animations (contrary to my post).

Please reply here if node / morph animation support in Office are interesting to you.

Thanks,

Aimee

PM | Office Graphics Team

I am having a hard time with the Play mode for the 3d models, I am choosing the model I want to use the I right click but no option to play. Any ideas?

i don't have 3d model tool in powerpoin online how do i have that tool?