Blend to FBX converter — without installing Blender
VTubeMe's .blend to FBX converter opens your Blender project on our server and writes a binary FBX with the armature, shape keys and textures inside. Free, five conversions a day, no Blender install.
Try it with a test file
We converted one file and kept both sides, so you can check the result instead of taking our word for it. The .blend is a rigged character with 73 bones, 118 shape keys and 15 packed textures; the FBX is what this page's converter wrote from it, untouched. Upload the .blend above and you should get the same numbers.
| Measured | sample.blend | sample.fbx, re-imported |
|---|---|---|
| Armatures / bones | 1 / 73 | 1 / 73 — every name and every parent matches |
| Meshes skinned to the armature | 10 | 10 |
| Vertices | 10,977 | 10,977 — same order, none moved more than 0.01 mm |
| Triangles | 16,867 | 16,867 |
| Height of the skinned mesh | 1.8143 m | 1.8143 m |
| Armature and mesh world scale | 1.0 | 1.0 |
| Vertex groups carrying weight | 60 | 60 — weights identical to six decimals |
| Most bones influencing one vertex | 4 | 4 |
| Shape keys | 118 | 118 — same names, identical offsets |
| Custom normals | 10 meshes | 10 meshes — largest deviation 0.05° |
| Materials | 10 | 10 |
| Base colour textures bound | 10 | 10 |
| Normal maps / alpha textures bound | 9 / 1 | 9 / 1 |
| Image files inside | 15 (14 JPEG, 1 PNG), 2.06 MB | 15 (14 JPEG, 1 PNG), 1.81 MB — same resolutions, re-encoded |
Both files were opened in Blender 4.5.13 on 10 October 2026 and measured by the same script; the FBX was read back with Blender's own FBX importer at default settings. Height is the bounding box of the mesh after the armature is applied, not of the raw vertices. Unity, Unreal and Maya read the same file through their own importers, which we did not measure here.
What did not carry over
- The textures are re-encoded, not copied. None of the 15 image files is byte-for-byte the one in the .blend. The PNG comes out pixel-identical; the JPEGs are compressed a second time, which moved the base-colour pixels by 1 level in 255 on average (2.8 on the worst texture, 49 on the worst single pixel). Resolution is unchanged, and you will not see it at normal viewing distance — but it is not lossless.
- Backface culling was on for all 10 materials in the .blend and off for all 10 after re-import. The eyelash material's blend mode changed from alpha blend to alpha hashed. Roughness and metallic values came back the same; treat any other material setting as something to check in your target tool.
- Animation. This sample has none, so nothing was lost here, but a .blend with actions leaves without them — see the limits below.
The sample is one of our own avatars, published under CC BY 4.0 — use it, modify it, redistribute it with credit. More free avatars →
The project is opened, not imported
What is uploaded is the project itself, not an export you have to make first. You need the file, not the 300 MB program, and the .blend never has to be opened by you.
A .blend is not an interchange file: it is Blender's own save format, holding a whole session — scenes, collections, modifiers, node graphs, and whatever the artist had switched off at the time. The conversion opens it as the project, which means the rig and the materials are read as they were authored rather than as some exporter's approximation of them.
One measured run: a 19 MB character project came out as an FBX carrying 1,014 bones across nine armatures, 16 skinned meshes, 23 shape keys, seven materials and 28,738 triangles.
The file's own scripts and driver expressions are refused before anything is read. An uploaded .blend is untrusted input, and Blender's auto-run is exactly the mechanism that would make it dangerous.
Hidden objects are the trap, and they are revealed
Working files hide things. The finished mesh sits in a collection excluded from the view layer, a WIP duplicate is switched off next to it, a cape is hidden while the artist works on the face. Every exporter walks the view layer, so anything excluded or hidden simply does not reach the file — and you get a character missing its clothes with no error to explain it.
We measured exactly that: one project in our corpus holds 239 mesh objects and puts only 24 of them in the view layer. A plain export writes those 24 and nothing else. So the conversion un-excludes every collection and un-hides every mesh and armature first, then exports — the same run produced 238 meshes instead of 24.
The side effect is worth knowing about: if the project deliberately holds two versions of a mesh, both are exported. That is the honest trade against silently losing the one you wanted.
What this conversion cannot do
Measured on real files, not assumed. Everything below is a property of the formats or of the pipeline, and knowing it beforehand is cheaper than discovering it in your 3D tool.
Textures have to be in the file
A .blend references its images by path unless they were packed into it. Packed images are written into the FBX. Un-packed ones are looked for at the path the project remembers, which is a folder on the artist's own computer — so pack them first (File → External Data → Pack Resources) or zip the project with its texture folder. The exporter also embeds only images it can trace through the material, so node-group and toon setups can arrive without theirs.
Linked libraries do not travel
If the character is linked in from another .blend rather than living in this one, the upload carries only the reference and the scene opens empty. Make the objects local (File → External Data, or Object → Relations → Make Local) and save before converting.
Animation does not travel
The skeleton is written, the motion curves are not. Reading an FBX's animation costs about 1.5 GB of memory on a long clip, which is more than the converter container has, so the importer is asked to skip it and the exporter writes none. A file that arrives with a walk cycle leaves with the same rig in its bind pose. If what you have is the motion rather than the model, the FBX to VRMA converter is the tool that keeps it.
Five conversions a day, per account
This pair is free and takes no credits, but one account gets five conversions per rolling 24 hours across all the free format pairs together — the converter is one machine and this is what keeps it answering. Each slot frees itself 24 hours after it was used; nothing expires at midnight. Conversions that fail are not counted.
Frequently asked questions
Can I convert a .blend to FBX without installing Blender?
Yes — that is what this page does. Upload the .blend and Blender runs on our server: the project is opened, hidden and excluded objects are revealed, and a binary FBX is written with the armature, the shape keys and the packed textures inside it. Nothing is installed on your machine.
Does the rig come through?
Yes. The armature is read from the project as authored — a test file came out with all 1,014 of its bones across nine armatures, with 16 meshes still skinned to them and 23 shape keys intact. The animation is the exception: motion curves are skipped, so the rig arrives in its rest pose.
My character is missing parts of itself. Why?
Usually because they were hidden or in an excluded collection in the project — the classic reason a hand-made Blender export loses clothing. This conversion un-hides and un-excludes everything first, so the more likely cause here is the opposite: check whether the missing part is linked in from another .blend, which does not travel with the file.
My .blend was saved in a newer Blender than yours. Is that a problem?
Usually not. Blender reads newer files on a best-effort basis and most projects open fine; the conversion notes when it happens. If the result looks wrong in a way you cannot explain, re-saving the project from an older Blender version is the first thing to try.
Can I get a VRM out of my .blend instead?
Yes, and directly — no FBX in between. The Blender-to-VRM converter opens the same project, maps the armature onto the VRM humanoid (including Rigify's DEF- deform chain) and carries the materials and textures over. Blender to VRM converter →
What about .blend to GLB or OBJ?
FBX is the target here because it is what people ask for — it is the format Unity and Unreal ingest. If you want a single self-contained web file, convert the resulting FBX to GLB in one more free step. FBX to GLB converter →
The other format pairs
All 30 are free, all run the same pipeline, and all say what they drop.
GLB to FBX
GLB in, FBX out — free, one file.
FBX to GLB
FBX in, GLB out — free, one file.
FBX to OBJ
FBX in, OBJ out — free, zipped with its materials.
STL to FBX
STL in, FBX out — free, one file.
PLY to FBX
PLY in, FBX out — free, one file.
DAE to FBX
DAE in, FBX out — free, one file.
USDZ to FBX
USDZ in, FBX out — free, one file.
FBX to STL
FBX in, STL out — free, one file.
FBX to PLY
FBX in, PLY out — free, one file.
FBX to DAE
FBX in, DAE out — free, zipped with its textures.
FBX to USDZ
FBX in, USDZ out — free, one file.
Only want to look at the file? GLB viewer, FBX viewer and OBJ viewer all run on your own device — nothing is uploaded.
Is your model going into VTubing?
If the character in that project is destined for VTubing, there is a shorter road: the .blend converts straight to VRM — humanoid bones mapped, Rigify handled, materials and textures carried over — with no FBX step in the middle.
Open the VRM converter