This tutorial works for the various image file formats supported in Augment, including GIF.
First, if you want to create a planar 2D image, keep a note of the picture original dimensions. It will be edited to allow the texture to be applied correctly in Augment.
Indeed, to display correctly the texture should have specific dimensions (multiple of 2). You can mainly use : 2048, 1024, 512, 256, 128, 64, 32 pixels.
The best texture proportions are square ones. However, in Augment's engine you can use non square multiple of 2 dimensions, as in this tutorial : 1024 x 512.
Off-sized textures can also be used as there is an automatic resize included in Augment, however please be aware that you may lose in quality compared as if you manually resize the images (with Photoshop or other image editor).
If you didn't crop the image for resizing, it will appear distorted, which is normal and will display correctly at the end of the process.
However please avoid distorting too much the map to avoid blurry display in the app.
Following is an example of picture, and the result of the edit:
Before the resizing (1600 x 538 pixels) :
After the resizing:
Now let’s get to the 3D part:
Install the free 3D software Blender : https://www.blender.org/ (version 2.79 in this tutorial).
When you open the software there is the Blender opening page, click around it to close it. The software should look like this:
First we will create a plane.
Press the delete button of your keyboard to remove the cube, and click on the delete request that appears.
Press Shift + A to show the menu for creation, then select mesh > plane.
In the right panel, click on the third tab “Scene”, and in the Units part choose “Metric” for the length (or other unit).
Then press N to show the panel for dimensions. Enter the needed measures in x (length) and y (height).
Now let’s put the image on it. On the right panel, choose the 9th tab, “Material”, and click new material.
Then in the 10th tab, “Texture”, click on add a new texture.
Click “Open” and select your resized picture.
In the Mapping part, for Coordinates, select “Object”. In the list of object just under, select the object “Plane”.
To check if the image displays correctly, press F12 to show a render of the 3D model.
Press F11 to close the render.
To apply the display for export, go to Edit Mode in bottom left.
Then press U and choose “Unwrap” in the panel.
To export the model, go to file > export, and choose .obj.
Choose the directory and the name of your file. Tick the “Triangulate Faces” box, and edit the Up and Forward to match with the orientation of your image. On previous example it will be Y forward and Z up.
Finally click on “Export OBJ”. Your OBJ file is ready to be uploaded into Augment. You can do so by packing the .obj, the .mtl and the image (resized) together in a zip and uploading it from the Augment manager: https://manager.augment.com/.