Import a rigged, animated GLB into Blender

GLB can carry a mesh, its materials and textures, a skeleton, skin weights and animation in one file. For a Bake3D workflow, it is the simplest way to bring a generated asset into Blender without rebuilding its rig.

Use the Bake3D add-on

Download bake3d-blender.zip. In Blender 4.2 or newer, open Preferences → Add-ons → Install from Disk, choose the ZIP and enable Bake3D. If you installed the older single-file bake3d.py add-on, remove it first. Open the Bake3D tab in the 3D Viewport sidebar.

Enter an API key from Account → API (Pro or Studio) for this session, or start Blender with BAKE3D_API_KEY in its environment. The key is never written to the .blend file. Refresh the credits line to load your balance; the generation and motion buttons then show their current costs.

Choose Image file and pick a PNG, JPEG or WebP with the file browser; the add-on uploads it to your account. You can also choose Image URL or Text. Select Generate mesh and rig. Network work runs on a worker thread and a timer applies its results, so Blender stays responsive. The job is checked every four seconds, with a back-off when rate limited and a 20-minute limit. Stop waiting leaves the job running; Cancel job stops it and refunds its credits. Skip the included animation at generation creates a rig without the free included motion.

For an existing character, search your rigged projects and choose one. Compose motion describes new motion with a length and loop setting. Choose Saved animation or Preset to import something other than the included animation. Refresh animations and presets shows which presets fit this rig and why others cannot play on it.

Select Import character. Rest pose only leaves the animation out of this export only. Root motion bakes travel into the skeleton’s motion_root bone. Height (m) scales the export to a real-world height; 0 keeps the generated size.

What an import creates

Each import goes into a new collection named after the character, and its top object is renamed to match. The action is named after the clip. The scene’s frame range grows to include the clip but never shrinks. A looping clip ends one frame early, because its last key repeats the first pose and would otherwise play twice at the seam. glTF stores times in seconds, and Blender converts them with the scene’s frame rate, which the add-on leaves unchanged. Imports support undo.

Exports are grounded (feet at zero height) and centred on the origin, facing glTF +Z. Blender maps that to −Y, so the character faces the Front view. The armature’s top bone is motion_root, an unweighted bone on the ground. With Root motion on, it carries only planar travel and heading, and the hips keep their bob and jump. With Root motion off, it stays still and the character animates in place, keeping vertical motion such as a jump and wheel roll.

For a connected Blender MCP bridge or your own script, set the key in the add-on, then call bpy.ops.bake3d.import_character(project_id="PROJECT_ID", animation_id="ANIMATION_ID", synchronous=True). Scripts can also use from bake3d import Client. The integration reference lists the setup details.