suvadityamuk/smithsonian-open-access-3d

Smithsonian Open Access 3D

A Hugging Face packaging of the 3D models in Smithsonian Open Access: scans of museum objects from the National Museum of Natural History (shells, corals, primate skulls, fossils, plants, insects), the National Museum of African American History and Culture, the National Museum of American History, the National Air and Space Museum, the National Museum of Asian Art, the National Portrait Gallery, the Smithsonian American Art Museum and others.

Only items whose 3D media is marked CC0 in the Open Access metadata are included. Every mesh is the original Smithsonian GLB, stored byte-for-byte.

• Rows: 3,451 (one per 3D package; a package is one Voyager scan, and an object can have several)
• Mesh data: 22.3 GB of GLB
• License: CC0 1.0 (per-item media_usage_access is CC0 for every row)

Two subsets, and the default changed on 2026-10-26. Loading the dataset without a subset name now returns the metadata subset, which has no mesh column. Pass "full" to get the meshes:

Subset	Files	Contents
metadata (default)	metadata/	Every column except mesh (previews and all metadata); this is what the dataset viewer shows
full	data/	Every column, including mesh (the original GLB as a Mesh feature)

load_dataset("suvadityamuk/smithsonian-open-access-3d", split="train")           # metadata, no meshes
load_dataset("suvadityamuk/smithsonian-open-access-3d", "full", split="train")   # with meshes

Before this change the default returned every column including mesh; code that relied on that needs "full" added. The files in data/ did not change, and both subsets have the same rows in the same order, so row indices match. Code that pins an earlier revision (for example revision="f2ce6fc") or reads data/*.parquet directly is unaffected. The metadata subset exists because the Hugging Face dataset viewer cannot yet render Mesh columns.

Usage

from datasets import load_dataset

ds = load_dataset("suvadityamuk/smithsonian-open-access-3d", "full", split="train")
row = ds[0]
row["title"], row["unit_code"], row["scientific_name"]
scene = row["mesh"]                      # trimesh.Scene (pip install trimesh DracoPy)
row["preview"]                           # PIL.Image render of the scan

For the raw GLB bytes use ds.cast_column("mesh", datasets.Mesh(decode=False)), which yields {"bytes": <original GLB bytes>, "path": <file name>}.

Fields

Field	Description
package_id	Smithsonian 3D package UUID (3d_package:<id>)
title, package_title	Object title from the Open Access record, and the 3D package title
mesh	Original GLB as a Mesh feature (see mesh_source); only in the full subset
preview	Smithsonian render of the scan (JPEG)
unit_code, data_source	Owning museum / department
record_id, record_ids, record_link, guid	Open Access record identifiers and persistent link
object_type, topic, date, place, culture, set_name	Indexed descriptive metadata
tax_*, scientific_name	Taxonomy for natural-history specimens
license, media_usage_access	CC0-1.0 / the per-item Open Access usage flag
voyager_url	Interactive Voyager viewer for the scan
mesh_source, mesh_url, draco_compressed	Which Smithsonian file was used (see below)
vertices, faces, gltf_textures, stats_json	Mesh statistics computed with trimesh
available_files_json	Every file the Smithsonian publishes for the package (other resolutions, OBJ/PLY, USDZ)
record_json	The full, unmodified Open Access metadata record

Which mesh is stored

For each package the first available of these is used, all original Smithsonian files:

1. web_high_nondraco: the web "High" GLB without Draco compression (150k faces, 4096 px textures);
2. download_low_resolution: the downloadable "Low resolution" GLB, when it is not Draco-compressed;
3. web_high: the web "High" GLB with Draco mesh compression (draco_compressed = true).

Draco-compressed GLBs decode with trimesh only when DracoPy is installed; without it trimesh returns placeholder zero geometry. Full-resolution scans (PLY and OBJ archives, about 0.8 TB in total) are not included; their URLs are in available_files_json.

License and terms

The Smithsonian dedicates Open Access items marked CC0 to the public domain: "This Content is not protected by copyright and may be used for commercial and noncommercial purposes without fee or copyright restriction" (Smithsonian Terms of Use). Notes from the same terms:

• CC0 "pertains only to the copyright status of the Content." The Smithsonian "does not guarantee that all Content marked with the [CC0] icon is free from rights held by third parties," such as trademark, privacy or publicity rights. Some objects show trademarks or the names and likenesses of people (for example costumes, branded products and sports equipment); you are responsible for any such rights in your use.
• Attribution is not required, but the Smithsonian asks for a credit line of title, source, license and source URL; record_link gives the persistent link for each object.
• Do not use Smithsonian names or logos to imply endorsement. This mirror is not affiliated with or endorsed by the Smithsonian Institution.

The Smithsonian notes that collection language "reflects the context and culture of the time of its creation, and may include culturally sensitive information." See the Open Access Values Statement.

Provenance

Metadata comes from the weekly Open Access metadata dumps (s3://smithsonian-open-access/metadata/edan/); files come from the public Open Access S3 bucket and the Smithsonian 3D API (3d-api.si.edu). Packages listed in the 3D API without a CC0 Open Access record are excluded, as are CC0 packages without a downloadable GLB; see meta/excluded.jsonl.

Attribution

Credit: Smithsonian Institution, Smithsonian Open Access (https://www.si.edu/openaccess). Per-object credit and links are in data_source and record_link.