Previewing and Publishing
Mattercraft provides seamless options for previewing and publishing your experiences. Previewing allows you to see your project come to life in real-time, while publishing enables you to share your creations with the world through Zapworks or by self hosting.
Previewing
Previewing in Mattercraft will listen for changes in your project and will automatically update when these changes occur or are saved, in real-time.
When you click on Live Preview, you will be given the option to scan a QR code, copy and paste a preview URL into a separate browser, or use the Simulator.
These actions will launch your active live preview server.
There’s no need to close this down or scan the QR code each time you want to preview; simply keep the live preview open on your device(s) and make changes.
Preview Settings
In the Settings Panel, you will find a Live Preview Reload option. You can update this based on your preference:
By updating your settings, you will be able to use live preview more effectively in your workflow.
| Live Preview Reload option | Description |
|---|---|
| On Save | Preview will wait until you explicitly save the project before changes are pulled into the live preview. |
| On Change | All changes in the project will be shown in the preview, at real-time. |
Simulator
The Simulator is a Live Preview view which opens inside Mattercraft and lets you test your project on different screen sizes.
Publishing
Once you are satisfied with your project and ready to share it with others, you can publish it using Mattercraft's publishing capabilities.
Publishing your project through the Mattercraft UI will host it on Zapworks.
Using this method, Mattercraft will handle the deployment and hosting of your project. This simplifies the publishing process and removes a lot of the complexity of hosting a web based experience.
Once the publishing process is complete, your experience will be live. You will receive a QR code trigger, in which you can share with others.
Self-Hosting
If you would like to self-host your project, simply download the publish output of your Mattercraft project. To do so, follow these steps:
- Open the Settings menu in Mattercraft
- Look for the Download Publish Output option and click on it, the button will change to Preparing and once ready, you will be prompted to save the output ZIP folder onto your computer
Once you save the project output ZIP file, you can upload it to your preferred self-hosting platform (you are essentially hosting a website, so the same methods apply).
Self-hosting tips
When self-hosting your content, there are a number of recommendations we make to ensure the best experience for end-users:
- You need to register your domain name with Zapworks so that it passes the license check. For more information, head over to the Licensing article, or, Get in touch.
- You must serve the content over HTTPS (due to browser restrictions surrounding the camera)
Making changes
After publishing your project, you may want to make updates or changes to enhance the experience or fix bugs. Mattercraft allows you to easily update your published projects without disrupting the user experience.
Republishing
Simply make your changes and click Publish, your users will then see the most up-to-date version next time they launch the experience. This streamlined process ensures that you can continuously iterate and improve your AR experiences, without any external review process.
Commits
In Mattercraft, you also have the ability to make commits at key stages during development, including unsaved file changes. This allows you to capture versions of your project at different milestones or when implementing significant features.
To make a commit in Mattercraft, simply click on the Commits icon in the bottom left hand corner (floppy disk), enter a descriptive commit message and click the Commit button.
If at any point you want to revert to a previous commit, you can easily do so by selecting the desired commit from the commit history and clicking the Revert to this Commit option. This will undo the changes made after that commit, effectively restoring your project to the state it was in at that specific point in time.
