File Formats
← Knowledge baseGLB, FBX, OBJ, USD, STL — what each one actually carries.
- 01Choosing a 3D file formatThe format decides what survives the export. A quick map from use case to the right container.
- 02GLB and glTFThe modern standard for real-time 3D. What it carries, how the two variants differ, and where its limits are.
- 03FBX: the interchange workhorseProprietary, ubiquitous, and the reason your model is a hundred times too big. What it does well and where it bites.
- 04OBJ and MTLAncient, simple, universally readable. What it carries, what it drops, and why it is still around.
- 05STL and 3MF: the printing formatsSTL is triangles and nothing else. 3MF fixes most of what that costs, and is less universally supported.
- 06USD and USDZA scene description built for large collaborative pipelines, and its AR-focused single-file variant.
- 07STEP and CAD interchangeExact parametric surfaces rather than triangles. When you need them, and why converting back is hard.
- 08Texture formats: PNG, JPEG, EXR, KTX2Source formats, delivery formats and GPU formats are three different things. Confusing them costs quality or memory.
- 09What breaks when you convert between formatsEvery conversion is lossy in some direction. The specific losses, so you can check for them.