How to Convert GLB to FBX (and FBX to GLB)

GLB and FBX can both hold a full animated character: the mesh, the textures, the skeleton, the skin weights and the animation. So a conversion between them should lose very little. The trouble is that each format stores units, bone directions and materials a bit differently. Most problems after a conversion come from those three things. Pick the right settings and they go away.

First, do you really need FBX?

Check what your destination reads before you convert.

Destination	Reads GLB?	Reads FBX?	What to use
Unity	With the glTFast package	Yes, its main format	FBX, or GLB with glTFast
Unreal Engine	Yes, through Interchange	Yes, its classic pipeline	Either
Godot 4.3 and newer	Yes, recommended	Yes, built in	GLB
Blender	Yes	Yes	Either
Roblox Studio	Yes	Yes	Either
Web pages and three.js	Yes	Not well	GLB

If your target reads GLB well, keep it. Every conversion is a chance for something to go wrong. Convert when a tool, a team or a store asks for FBX.

The quick way: a free GLB to FBX converter

Our GLB to FBX converter does the whole job in your browser. Drop in a GLB, pick a frame rate and download the FBX.

It keeps:

• the node hierarchy, the skeleton and the skin weights;
• every animation, each as its own take, baked on every frame with every joint keyed;
• static meshes, material slots and the base color texture, packed inside the file.

It does not keep morph targets, cameras, lights, vertex colors or maps other than base color. It also cannot read files with Draco compression or separate .bin files. The report beside the download lists anything it left out. If you need one of those, use Blender, as shown below.

What survives a GLB to FBX conversion

Part	Survives?	Notes
Mesh and UVs	Yes	Four-sided faces are already triangles in glTF
Base color texture	Yes	Only if you embed or copy the textures
Metal, roughness and normal maps	Partly	You may need to reconnect them in the target app
Skeleton	Yes	Bone direction settings change how bones look, not how they move
Skin weights	Yes
Animation	Yes	Each animation becomes its own clip, called a take or stack
Shape keys	Test it	Check your blend shapes in the target after export
Rig controls and constraints	No	Only their baked result is kept

How to convert GLB to FBX in Blender

Blender is free and handles rigged, animated files well. These steps match Blender 5.2 LTS.

1. Open Blender and delete the default cube, camera and light.
2. Go to File, Import, glTF 2.0 (.glb/.gltf) and pick your GLB.
3. Check the import. Press play on the timeline. Blender plays the first animation. Each glTF animation is stored as an action on its own track in the Nonlinear Animation editor.
4. Select the model. Click the armature and the mesh, or press A to select all.
5. Go to File, Export, FBX (.fbx).
6. Set the options from the table below, pick a file name and click Export FBX.

The FBX export settings that matter

Section	Setting	Set it to	Why
Include	Object Types	Armature and Mesh	Leaves out stray lights and cameras
Include	Limit to Selected Objects	On, if you selected the model	Exports only what you picked
Transform	Apply Scalings	All Local (the default)	Try FBX Units Scale if the size is wrong in your engine
Transform	Forward and Up	-Z Forward, Y Up (the default)	Matches most game engines
Transform	Apply Transform	Off	Blender marks it as experimental and known to break armatures
Path Mode	Path Mode	Copy	Needed to put textures inside the file
Path Mode	Embed Textures	On (the small box icon)	Packs the images into the FBX
Armature	Add Leaf Bones	Off	Stops extra bones ending in _end
Armature	Primary and Secondary Bone Axis	Y and X (the default)	Only change these if bones look sideways in another app
Animation	Baked Animation	On	Stores a value for every bone on every frame
Animation	NLA Strips and All Actions	Keep one if you see doubled clips	Both are on by default and can export the same motion twice

A good habit: save these choices as an Operator Preset with the plus button at the top of the export window. Next time it is one click.

Fix the usual problems

The model is 100 times too big or too small. FBX files treat one unit as a centimetre. Blender and glTF use metres. Blender’s source code notes that it scales by 100 when no unit is set. If your engine then reads the unit and the object scale in a different way, you get a jump of 100. Try the other Apply Scalings option, or turn on the unit conversion in your engine’s importer. In Unity, it is called Convert Units.

There are extra bones named something_end. These are leaf bones. Export again with Add Leaf Bones turned off.

The textures are missing or grey. The FBX saved paths to image files instead of the images. Export again with Path Mode set to Copy and Embed Textures turned on.

The animation names look like Armature|Walk. Blender names each clip with the object name, a bar and the action name. Rename the actions in Blender before export if you need clean names.

The same animation appears twice. Turn off either NLA Strips or All Actions and export again.

The bones point the wrong way in Maya or 3ds Max. FBX bones usually point along the X axis. Blender’s point along Y. This does not change how the model moves. If it bothers you, change Primary Bone Axis and Secondary Bone Axis.

The mesh does not follow the skeleton. Check that the mesh has an Armature modifier pointing at the armature, and that the vertex groups have the same names as the bones.

How to convert FBX to GLB

The reverse trip is simpler, because glTF has fewer options.

1. In Blender, go to File, Import, FBX (.fbx). Since Blender 5.0, the default FBX importer is a newer, faster one. The older one is still there, marked Legacy.
2. Check the scale, the materials and each animation.
3. Go to File, Export, glTF 2.0 (.glb/.gltf).
4. Pick glTF Binary (.glb) as the format.
5. In the Animation section, keep animations on. If you have several, check that each one is its own action.

Two things to watch. glTF only uses PNG and JPEG textures in its core format, so other image types get converted or dropped. And glTF uses a fixed material model with base color, metal and roughness, so custom FBX materials are simplified.

For a static FBX with no rig, our free FBX to OBJ converter runs in your browser, and the OBJ to GLB converter takes it the rest of the way.

Skip the conversion if you can

The cleanest file is one that was exported in the right format to begin with. Bake3D exports both formats from the same model:

• GLB with the mesh, PBR textures, skeleton, skin weights and baked animation.
• FBX in binary version 7.4 with the skeleton, skin weights, an embedded base color texture and one baked animation clip per file.

We have checked our FBX files by importing them into Blender 4.4. We have not yet run them through Unity or Unreal Engine ourselves, so do a quick check in your engine. The image to 3D page shows the full workflow, and what a GLB file is explains the format in more depth.