GLB to DAE converter — for the tools that still want Collada
VTubeMe's GLB to DAE converter writes your .glb as a Collada 1.4.1 file with the skeleton, skin weights and shape keys, zipped with its base-colour textures — for SketchUp, Second Life and older engines. Free, five a day, up to 50 MB. Animation does not travel.
How do I convert a GLB to DAE (Collada)?
Drop the .glb on this page and download a zip holding the .dae and its textures.
- 1Drop your .glb into the box above, up to 50 MB; sign in when prompted.
- 2The file is opened in Blender on our server and written with its Collada exporter: meshes triangulated, skeleton, skin weights and shape keys included, each material's base-colour image copied beside the .dae.
- 3Download the zip, unpack it, and keep the .dae and the images in one folder.
- Accepts:
- one .glb up to 50 MB.
- Returns:
- a zip: one Collada 1.4.1 .dae (Z-up, metres) and its base-colour textures.
- 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 and 10 materials in, the same back in Blender; 8 of 15 images written — the base-colour ones.
- Normal, roughness and alpha maps are not written.
- Shape keys make the .dae large: 29.6 MB for a 3 MB avatar with 118 of them.
- Verified by re-import in Blender only; animation does not travel.
What actually happens to the file
Collada is the older open format glTF replaced, and a handful of programs still take it and little else: SketchUp, Second Life and OpenSim mesh upload, engines and toolchains from around 2010. This is the conversion for getting a current model into one of those.
The rig is written. Our avatar went in with 73 bones, 10 skinned meshes and 118 shape keys, and reading the .dae back in Blender gives the same counts and the same 1.81 m height with the skin applied.
The materials are simpler on the other side. Collada's common material is a 2000s shading model, and the exporter writes one texture per material — the base colour. Of the avatar's 15 images, the 8 base-colour ones are in the zip; its normal maps are not.
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.
Base-colour textures only
The download is a zip: the .dae and the images its materials name, by relative path. On the sample avatar that was 8 of the 15 images — exactly the eight bound to a base colour. Normal maps, roughness and alpha maps are not written, because the Collada writer exports a material's diffuse texture and nothing else. The eight are written in their own format, a JPEG staying a JPEG.
Shape keys make the file very large
Collada is XML, and every shape key is written out as a complete second copy of its mesh in text. The sample avatar — 16,867 triangles, 118 shape keys — produced a .dae of 29.6 MB from a 3 MB model. A model with no shape keys does not have this problem. If the destination ignores morph targets, as most old Collada importers do, an FBX or GLB will serve you better.
Read back in Blender, and nowhere else
The result was re-imported with Blender's Collada reader: the counts above came back and the skinned mesh measured the same 1.7605 × 0.3017 × 1.8143 m. It was not opened in SketchUp, Second Life, OpenSim, Godot, Assimp-based tools or any older engine, and Collada is the format where importers disagree most. The file is Collada 1.4.1, Z-up, one unit to the metre, triangulated.
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
Does the skeleton survive GLB to DAE?
It is written, and Blender reads it back complete: 73 bones, 10 skinned meshes, 118 shape keys on our test avatar. Whether your target program reads Collada skinning the same way is the open question — we did not test other importers.
Why is the download a zip?
Because a textured .dae is several files: the XML document and the images it names. Unpack the zip and keep them in one folder — the .dae finds its textures by relative path, so moving it alone gives you a grey model.
When is Collada still the right target?
When the program on the other end takes little else: SketchUp, Second Life and OpenSim mesh upload, older game engines and toolchains from the late 2000s, some robotics and simulation packages. For anything current — Unity, Unreal, Godot 4, three.js — FBX or GLB is the better-supported road.
Can I preview the .dae?
Yes — the DAE viewer opens it in your browser; drop the .dae together with its images. 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.
GLB to OBJ
GLB in, OBJ out — free, zipped with its materials.
DAE to GLB
DAE in, GLB out — free, one file.
DAE to FBX
DAE in, FBX out — free, one file.
DAE to OBJ
DAE in, OBJ out — free, zipped with its materials.
GLB to STL
GLB in, STL out — free, one file.
GLB to PLY
GLB in, PLY out — free, one file.
GLB to USDZ
GLB in, USDZ out — free, one file.
FBX to DAE
FBX in, DAE out — free, zipped with its textures.
OBJ to DAE
OBJ in, DAE out — free, zipped with its textures.
FBX to GLB
FBX in, GLB out — free, one file.
OBJ to GLB
OBJ in, GLB out — free, one file.
STL to GLB
STL in, GLB out — free, one file.
PLY to GLB
PLY in, GLB out — free, one file.
USDZ to GLB
USDZ in, GLB 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