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Important

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Important

Use of the Meta Horizon Worlds desktop editor is limited to persons aged 13 and above. Meta reserves the right to conduct its own review of the information that a creator provides to determine whether the age group provided by the creator is accurate. Any misrepresentation of user's age group may result in rejection, suspension, or removal of that creator's account and/or world.

When you create a new world in Meta Horizon Worlds, you need to set the Choose how you’ll create option.

The Create New World dialog box showing the option for creating a new world using a custom model import

This option specifies your world’s creation mode, which determines the kind of world to create. You have two options. You can create your world using:

Primitive Assets

Fill your new world with relatively simple objects made from Shapes, Asset Templates, and objects spawned from the Public Asset Library. This is the default creation mode, and in Meta Horizon Worlds, you refer to the resulting world simply as a world.

Custom model import

Fill your world with objects spawned from imported complex 3D models, which you can create using your favorite 3D creation tool. In Meta Horizon Worlds, you refer to the resulting world as a custom model world. You can find your imported assets in your Personal Asset Library. The following image shows an example of what a complex 3D object spawned from an imported asset looks like. In this case, it’s an automatic rifle.

For more information about working with assets, see Creating, Importing, Viewing, and Spawning Assets. You can access your Personal Asset Library from the Desktop Editor, or online by visiting your My Worlds web page.

Note: You can get hands-on experience importing and spawning custom models by working through the Create Your First World tutorial.

Custom model files

A custom 3D model is composed of multiple files, and you need to specify all of them when you import a 3D model into the Desktop Editor. These files include:

An FBX file. This is the 3D model file format. It contains the 3D mesh along with scene data such as Cameras, Lighting, Geometry, Materials, and Animations.
One or more png files. These are image files, and they contain textures that map onto the 3D model’s surface to make the spawned object look more realistic.

For example, you need to import five files in order to import the automatic rifle asset mentioned above.

How to create a new custom model world

Follow this procedure to create a new custom model world.

Note: You cannot populate a custom model world with primitive assets.

On a Windows computer, launch the Meta Quest application for Windows.
In the Meta Quest app, start the Meta Horizon Worlds app in Desktop Mode. Meta Horizon Worlds opens into the Desktop Editor.
In Meta Horizon Worlds, create a new world by selecting New world. The Create a world dialog appears.
In the Name field, enter a name for your world.
Under Choose how you’ll create, select the option Custom Model Import.
Click Create.
Your new, empty custom model world opens in the Desktop Editor.

How to import a custom model asset

Follow this procedure to import a custom model asset, and then spawn an object from it and add it to your scene.

Note: To complete this procedure, you need a custom 3D model to import. That is, you need an FBX file and one or more PNG texture files. If you don’t have any, then you can get a copy of the Demo Assets from the Create Your First World tutorial.

In the Desktop Editor, open your Personal Asset Library by clicking the Assets tab at the bottom of the screen.
The Assets panel appears.
Add a new asset by clicking the Add New dropdown.
In the menu that appears, click 3D Model. The Import Models dialog box appears.
Select the asset files to import by clicking + Choose files on your device.
In the file picker window that appears, select the 3D model file (ACWpnBattleRifle.fbx) and its associated texture files (WpnBattleRifleA_BR.png, WpnBattleRifleA_MEO.png, WpnIndictator_BR.png, and WpnIndictator_MEO.png), and then click Open.
In the Import Models dialog box, click Import. Wait for the asset files to be imported into the Desktop Editor. The following asset icon appears in your My Assets folder.
Spawn an instance of the asset by clicking on the icon for the asset, dragging it into the scene, and then dropping it anywhere in the scene. A rifle object appears in the scene, and in the hierarchy.

The custom model import workflows

In this section, you’ll learn about the three workflows associated with building a custom model world.

Creating, saving, and importing custom 3D models

There are several requirements for creating and importing (ingesting) custom 3D models that you should be aware of. There are naming conventions for files, for specific file types, and for texture types. For more information, see Creating a Custom Model.

Using static lighting to light a custom 3D model

You can’t use objects with built-in lighting in custom model worlds. But you can get around this limitation by setting up static lighting on a per-object basis using a Static Lighting Gizmo. For more information, see the Static Light Gizmos User Guide.

Making your custom 3D model collidable

As you build your custom model world, you must keep an eye on your world’s performance because it degrades if you build your custom model world with very detailed, complex 3D models. To improve your custom model world’s performance, Meta recommends that you add a simple collider to your 3D model’s FBX file, which turns it into a collider asset. You can define custom collision shapes in the FBX file. When these colliders are imported into Meta Horizon Worlds, they become collider entities. Collider entities are a new type of entity that are used only for collision. You can use the following types of colliders: Box, Sphere, Capsule, and Mesh.

Note: Meta included a bonus Mesh collider in the Desktop Editor. Although it doesn’t perform as well as the other colliders, it is more flexible. It can conform to more complex shapes. For more information, see the Collider Ingestion User Guide.

3D modelling resources

To learn more about 3D modelling, follow these links:

Known issues

Meta recommends that you keep the following known issues in mind as you build your custom model world.

Custom model worlds don’t support spawning objects at runtime from assets that contain primitive shapes or static entities (entities with motion set to NONE). If you attempt to use such objects in your custom model world, you’ll break lighting and visuals, and it will impact your world’s performance.
You cannot convert a primitive asset world into a custom model world.
When you publish your custom model world, it takes anywhere from one to two minutes for it to be cached. Caching ensures that subsequent visits to your world happen quicker.
Note: While your custom model world is being cached, you can still access it and load into your world, but you’ll notice that the load time is noticably longer.
If caching fails, you’ll receive an email to let you know that your custom model world load time will take longer than normal. To fix this, simply re-publish your custom model world.
Note: To receive the notification email, you must enable Meta Quest > Email Preferences > App emails > Meta Horizon Worlds > Redcommendations.
You can spawn objects from 3D custom models into a primitive asset world, but you won’t be able to publish it.
Note: A selection of primitive assets is available to use and publish in your custom model worlds.
You can add primitive shapes (by clicking Build > Shapes) to your custom model world, but only for greyboxing. That is, you can’t use primitive shapes to build your entire world. You can always use custom 3D models to build your world after you’ve laid-out your design.

What’s next?

To learn more about Meta Horizon Worlds, try the following:

Create your first world using our step-by-step tutorial.
If you have issues when running the desktop editor, see Desktop Editor Troubleshooting
Learn about the desktop editor with the Introduction to the Desktop Editor.
Learn about the other tools available by reading our Tools Overview.
Join the Meta Horizon Creator Program to learn about our program benefits.