FBX is Autodesk’s proprietary scene format and the long-time workhorse of game development and animation pipelines. It carries meshes, rigs, skinning, animation takes and materials between tools like Maya, 3ds Max, Blender, Unity and Unreal.
FBX is the workhorse of game and animation pipelines: Maya, 3ds Max, Blender, Mixamo, Unity and Unreal all read and write it. It is Autodesk-proprietary, which is why an FBX viewer that does not require an Autodesk product is useful.
Best for: Game development and character animation exchange. There is a fuller write-up on the FBX format reference page.
Every format on this site also gets the same viewport tools: orbit, pan and zoom with fit-to-view, isometric and the six standard views, a perspective/orthographic toggle, shaded, shaded-with-edges, wireframe and X-ray display, hide-selected, and a PNG screenshot of the current view. The same controls are on the general 3D and CAD viewer, which accepts every importable format at once.
Worth knowing before you rely on it. A viewer that overstates what it can read wastes more of your time than one that is specific about its limits.
| FBX files | |
|---|---|
| Extensions | .fbx |
| Geometry | Polygon mesh scenes |
| Units | Yes |
| Colors & materials | Materials & textures |
| Animations | Yes — rigs & takes |
| Typical use | Game & animation pipelines |
FBX scene units are not applied to the readouts. Coordinates are shown as stored with a millimetre label, and since FBX scenes are frequently authored in centimetres, check the number against a feature you know.
FBX is read-only here. Converting it to glTF or GLB is the standard way to get an FBX scene into a web or open pipeline. The converter runs on the same local pipeline as this viewer, so a conversion is just as private as a preview: FBX to GLB is the usual choice.
No. Animation takes, skinning and morph targets are not evaluated, so a rigged character appears in its baked pose. Everything static — hierarchy, counts, dimensions, sections, measurements — is accurate.
Yes. Both encodings are parsed, so it does not matter which variant the exporter produced. Very old or unusual FBX versions can still be rejected, since the format is proprietary and has drifted between releases.
The viewer draws each mesh in its material’s base color rather than sampling texture maps, including textures embedded in the FBX. It is built for inspecting and measuring geometry, not for previewing a render.
No. It is parsed inside your browser tab. Because the FBX loader reaches for browser APIs that Web Workers lack, that parsing happens on the main thread — the file still never leaves your device.
Geometry: polygon mesh scenes. Units: yes. Colors and materials: materials & textures. Animations: yes — rigs & takes. Of that, the viewer draws geometry and flat base colors; texture maps and animation are never displayed. FBX scene units are not applied to the readouts. Coordinates are shown as stored with a millimetre label, and since FBX scenes are frequently authored in centimetres, check the number against a feature you know.
Read the FBX format reference for the format itself, open the general 3D and CAD viewer if you have several formats to look at, or start from the 3D and CAD converter.
The mesh simplifier does not read .fbx directly. To bring a triangle count down, convert to GLB first, then simplify that. If the file is headed for a 3D printer, the G-code viewer shows the sliced toolpath layer by layer once your slicer has run.
Which 3D format should you ship on the web? A practical comparison of glTF, GLB and OBJ — file size, materials, loading speed — with free conversion tools.
GLB is the binary form of glTF — the standard format for 3D on the web and in AR. What GLB files contain, how to open them free, and how to convert to and from GLB.