DAE to FBX converter — an old asset into a current pipeline
VTubeMe's DAE to FBX converter turns a Collada .dae into a binary FBX for Unity, Unreal and Maya, with the skeleton, skin weights and shape keys kept and the textures embedded. Free, five a day, up to 50 MB. Animation does not travel.
How do I convert a DAE (Collada) file to FBX?
Zip the .dae with its textures, drop the zip on this page and download a binary .fbx.
- 1Zip the folder that holds the .dae and its images and drop the .zip into the box above (a lone .dae converts untextured). Up to 50 MB; sign in when prompted.
- 2The file is opened with Blender's Collada reader on our server and written as binary FBX 7.4: skeleton, weights and shape keys carried, textures embedded, no leaf bones added.
- 3Download the .fbx and import it into your engine or DCC tool.
- Accepts:
- a .dae, or a .zip of the .dae with its textures, up to 50 MB.
- Returns:
- one binary FBX with the textures embedded.
- Costs:
- nothing, and no credits — an account, though: five conversions per account per rolling 24 hours, shared across all the free format pairs. Conversions that fail are not counted.
- Measured:
- 73 bones, 10 skinned meshes, 118 shape keys, 10 materials and 8 images in; the same out, 8 images embedded.
- Animation does not travel: the rig arrives in its bind pose.
- The rigged test file was a Collada written by Blender; other exporters' files were not tested.
- Never ASCII FBX — always binary.
What actually happens to the file
The usual story is an asset that only exists as Collada — an old marketplace purchase, a SketchUp export, a model pulled out of a 2010-era game — and a pipeline that wants FBX. Both formats describe meshes, materials, a skeleton and skin weights, so the conversion moves data across rather than rebuilding it.
Measured on a rigged character: 73 bones, 10 skinned meshes, 118 shape keys and 10 materials in, the same out, with the 8 images that sat beside the .dae embedded in the 9.14 MB FBX. The model is 1.81 m tall on both sides once the skin is applied.
The unit the .dae declares is honoured, so a file authored in centimetres or inches arrives at its real size rather than a hundred times too large.
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.
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.
Textures only arrive if they come with the file
A .dae names its images by path and does not contain them. Uploaded alone, it converts to the right shape with the right materials and no pictures. Zip the folder that holds the .dae and its textures and upload the .zip: the test file went in as a .dae with eight images beside it and all eight arrived. A .dae that names an image by an absolute path of any operating system (C:\Users\... included), by a path written with backslashes, by a file:// or web address, or by a path leading out of the uploaded folder, or that pulls in another Collada document, is refused outright — re-export it as one document with relative texture paths written with forward slashes.
The rig was measured on a DAE written by Blender
The rigged file we measured was our own DAE output fed back in — 73 bones, 10 skinned meshes and 118 shape keys in, the same out. That proves the reader and the writer agree with each other, not that every exporter's Collada is read correctly. Files from SketchUp, older Maya and 3ds Max plug-ins or game rippers vary a great deal; open the result in a viewer before relying on it. Collada's importer also stops on XML it cannot parse rather than repairing it.
Uploads stop at 50 MB
This pair takes files up to 50 MB — half of what the GLB, FBX and OBJ pairs take among themselves, because dense scans and print files cost the converter far more memory per megabyte than a game character does. For scale: a binary STL of 50 MB is about a million triangles, and we converted one of 999,698. If your file is larger, decimate it first; MeshLab and Blender both do that without changing the format.
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
Are the bones and weights kept?
Yes on the file we measured — 73 bones, 10 skinned meshes and 118 shape keys came through, and no “_end” leaf bones were appended. That file was written by Blender's Collada exporter; treat a rig from another exporter as something to check after converting. Open the result in the FBX viewer →
Are the textures inside the FBX?
If they were uploaded with the .dae, yes: all eight images of the test file were embedded. If the .dae arrived alone, there was nothing to embed — zip its folder and convert again.
Will the model keep its real size?
Yes — unlike STL or PLY, a Collada file states its unit and its up axis, and both are honoured. A test cube 100 units wide in a file declaring centimetres and Y-up came out one metre wide and upright. The conversion is applied as a scale on the object, so the vertex numbers inside a GLB or FBX are still 100 with a 0.01 scale above them; the OBJ, which has no transforms, holds 1.0.
Can I open the .dae without converting it?
Yes — the DAE viewer runs in your browser and nothing is uploaded. Open the DAE viewer →
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.
Blender (.blend) to FBX
Blender (.blend) in, FBX out — free, one file.
STL to FBX
STL in, FBX out — free, one file.
PLY to FBX
PLY in, FBX out — free, one file.
DAE to GLB
DAE in, GLB out — free, one file.
DAE to OBJ
DAE in, OBJ out — free, zipped with its materials.
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.
GLB to DAE
GLB in, DAE out — free, zipped with its textures.
OBJ to DAE
OBJ in, DAE out — free, zipped with its textures.
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 model is a rigged character and it is headed for VTubing, none of these containers is the destination — VSeeFace, Warudo and VNyan load VRM. The VRM converter takes the same rigged FBX or GLB, maps its skeleton onto the VRM humanoid and converts the materials.
Open the VRM converter