FBX to STL converter — a character for the printer
VTubeMe's FBX to STL converter writes your .fbx as one binary STL for a slicer, in the pose its skeleton holds. STL keeps the surface only — no textures, no rig. Free, five conversions a day, up to 50 MB.
How do I convert an FBX to STL for 3D printing?
Drop the .fbx on this page, download the .stl, and set its size in your slicer.
- 1Drop your binary .fbx into the box above, up to 50 MB; sign in when prompted.
- 2The file is opened in Blender on our server — the FBX's own unit is converted to metres on the way in — and every mesh is written into one binary STL, Z up, as the skeleton poses it.
- 3Download the .stl and scale it in the slicer, which reads the numbers as millimetres.
- Accepts:
- one binary .fbx (7.1 or newer) up to 50 MB.
- Returns:
- one binary STL holding every mesh as a single object.
- 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:
- 16,867 triangles in, 16,867 out, 0.80 MB; a character 1.8143 m tall is 1.8143 units tall in the STL.
- The STL is in metres whatever unit the FBX used; a slicer shows a 1.8 m character 1.8 mm tall until you scale it.
- No texture, material, rig or shape key survives.
- Not repaired or made watertight.
What actually happens to the file
FBX is what characters and props are traded in — Mixamo, game asset stores, Maya and 3ds Max exports — and STL is what a slicer opens. Printing a character means crossing from one to the other.
An FBX states its unit, usually centimetres, and Blender converts that to metres when it reads the file. The STL is then written without any further scaling, so the result is in metres regardless of what the FBX used: our 1.81 m character is 1.8143 units tall. STL cannot record that these are metres, and slicers assume millimetres.
Everything except the surface is left behind — 10 materials, 15 embedded textures, 73 bones and 118 shape keys in; 16,867 triangles in one object out.
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.
The STL is in the source's units — usually metres — and slicers assume millimetres
Nothing is rescaled. A character 1.8143 units tall came out as an STL 1.8143 units tall, with Z up. STL has no unit field, and Cura, PrusaSlicer and Bambu Studio read the numbers as millimetres, so a model authored in metres opens 1.8 mm high. Scale it by 1000 in the slicer — or by whatever takes it to the print height you want; an avatar has no real-world size to preserve anyway.
Only the surface survives
STL stores triangles and nothing else. Measured on the sample avatar: 10 materials, 15 textures, 73 bones and 118 shape keys in; none of them out, and all ten meshes merged into one object with the same 16,867 triangles. A skinned model is written in the pose its skeleton holds, so it arrives standing the way it stood, as a statue.
Converted is not the same as printable
Nothing is repaired, thickened or made watertight. A character built for real-time rendering is a set of open shells — hair cards, an eyeball inside a head, clothes with no inside — and a slicer will show holes and zero-thickness walls. That is a modelling job (or the repair step in your slicer, or Meshmixer), not something a format conversion does, and we do not pretend to.
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
Will a Mixamo character print?
It converts — the STL is the character in the pose the file holds, which without animation is its rest pose. Printing it is another matter: game characters are thin shells with separate eyes and open clothing, and need repair and usually thickening first.
Can I pose the character before converting?
Not here. Animation is not read, so the STL is the rest pose stored in the FBX. Pose it in Blender or your DCC tool, apply the pose to the mesh, export, and convert that.
My model has several parts. Do I get several STL files?
No — one file with every mesh in it. The sample avatar's ten meshes (body, hair, clothes, eyes) became a single object. If you want to print parts separately, split them in your slicer or 3D tool; most slicers offer “split to objects”.
Is the STL binary or ASCII?
Binary: 50 bytes per triangle, so the sample avatar's 16,867 triangles came to 0.80 MB. Every slicer reads binary STL.
Can I check the STL before printing?
Yes — open it in the STL viewer, which runs in your browser. Open the STL viewer →
The other format pairs
All 30 are free, all run the same pipeline, and all say what they drop.
FBX to GLB
FBX in, GLB out — free, one file.
FBX to OBJ
FBX in, OBJ out — free, zipped with its materials.
STL to GLB
STL in, GLB out — free, one file.
STL to FBX
STL in, FBX out — free, one file.
STL to OBJ
STL in, OBJ out — free, zipped with its materials.
GLB to STL
GLB 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.
OBJ to STL
OBJ in, STL out — free, one file.
GLB to FBX
GLB in, FBX out — free, one file.
Blender (.blend) to FBX
Blender (.blend) 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.
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