The Complete FBX to glTF Conversion Guide
General Information
This guide is part of the RapidPipeline 3D Formats Knowledge Database.It shows how to convert FBX to glTF, if you'd like to know more about the formats, please check out the following links:
Converting and Optimizing FBX Files to glTF
There are various ways to convert between FBX and glTF. With RapidPipeline, you can easily convert and and optimize FBX files, at scale. It supports glTF, as well as many other file formats (examples: OBJ, PLY, STL, USD, USDZ, VRM), at high quality.
Below you can see how to convert your files:
What are FBX and glTF files commonly used for?
The FBX file is a format mostly used for interactive 3D & rendering applications.
The glTF file is a format mostly used for interactive 3D, on the Web and elsewhere (e.g., in XR).
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Comparison of Features Supported by FBX and glTF
| Feature | Supported by FBX | Supported by glTF |
|---|---|---|
| Morph Targets | Yes | Yes |
| Rigid Animations | Yes | Yes |
| Skinned Animations | Yes | Yes |
| Animations | Yes | Yes |
| Free-Form Surfaces | Partial0 | No |
| Geometry Compression | Partial1 | Yes |
| Quad Meshes | Yes | No |
| Basic 3D Geometry | Yes | Yes |
| PBR Materials | Yes2 | Yes |
| Transparent Materials | Yes | Yes |
| Vertex Colors | Yes | Yes |
| Materials | Yes | Yes |
| Scene Composition | No | No |
| Hierarchical Scene Graph | Yes | Yes |
| Scene Nodes | Yes | Yes |
| Standardized Format | No3 | Yes |
| Embedded Textures | Yes | Yes |
| Multiple UV Channels | Yes | Yes |
| Normal Mapping | Yes | Yes |
| Procedural Textures | Partial | No |
| Texture Compression | Partial4 | Yes |
| Texture Transforms | Yes | Yes |
| Texturing | Yes | Yes |
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Limitations of FBX Files to glTF Conversion Workflow
The following limitations should be taken into account when converting FBX files to glTF format:
| FBX Feature (not supported by glTF) | Limitation Details |
|---|---|
| Free-Form Surfaces | Free-Form Surfaces Support: FBX: Partial support | glTF: No support   FBX Notes: The FBX SDK includes dedicated NurbsSurface and NurbsCurve node types. However, support varies by application — some tools (e.g. Blender) convert NURBS to meshes on export. Impact: Free-form surfaces allow a CAD user to design surfaces with advanced controls over curvature and continuitiy. While these surfaces are common for CAD models (in the form of so-called boundary representations or "B-reps"), they need to be converted to polygonal triangle or quad data to work with most 3D rendering engines - a process called tessellation. In this example, a surface patch is used to describe a part of a curved surface of a product. Without support for this feature, the free-form surface has to be tessellated into quads or triangles. |
| Quad Meshes | Quad Meshes Support: FBX: Full support | glTF: No support   Impact: Quad meshes are a common way to hand-model and edit 3D models. 3D artists get intuitive control and such meshes are also easy to refine, as well as well-suited for creation of skinned animations. However, real-time rendering pipelines and hardware are usually all based on triangles, so if a 3D model should not be edited any more, it is safe to convert quads to triangles (and engines will do this automatically before sending data to the rendering hardware). In this example, a part of a mesh is modeled with quads. Without support for this feature, quads will have to be triangulated, producing a pure triangle mesh. |
| Procedural Textures | Procedural Textures Support: FBX: Partial support | glTF: No support   Impact: Procedural texture allow the modeling of surface details through mathematical functions, along with artistic control over various parameters. Typically, they are used for patterns like wood grain or other semi-regular structures. Since they are not using any pixels as source data, procedural textures have, in principle, infinite resolution and are very lightweight to describe. In this example, a procedural texture is used to model the look of a wooden material. Without support for this feature, in this case, the wooden parts won't show any visible details. |
What's the best way to get FBX files into my 3D applications, and are there alternatives to using glTF?
Doing 3D conversion right, especially at scale, can be tricky, as 3D data is in general a rather complex (yet very powerful!) medium. This also applies to FBX and glTF files - the conversion guide above provides a rough first idea about that. Once you know what you would like to do, tools like RapidPipeline can help you perform the necessary steps, and to even automate the process for thousands or even millions of files.
Especially when introducing pipelines and workflows at scale in an enterprise context, it is usually good to rely on dedicated tools and expertise, making sure you do not introduce any steps into your 3D workflow that are detrimental to the final output's quality, or that take your team too much time (and money).
If you're interested to hire dedicated expertise from the best in the field to help your company reach your goals fast and reliably, please do not hestitate to contact DGG. Being the creators of RapidPipeline, and ambassadors for open 3D standards for more than a decade, we have been building some of the world's most advanced 3D pipelines, having processed many millions of 3D assets.
Therefore, our expertise will help you to reach your goals faster, at scale, and with the least possible friction, since we are focused on maximum interoperability.
To get started with 3D data conversion and optimization today, sign up for a free account!
If you have any questions, feel free to chat with our human team.
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