Hi Creators,
We are excited to announce the beta release of glTF Export in Studio. You can now export 3D assets uploaded to your account or your group’s accounts to a glTF file.
What is glTF?
glTF is a lightweight and powerful 3D interchange file format that is supported by popular 3D applications including Blender and Autodesk Maya. This feature enables powerful workflows including:
- Running Avatar Auto-Setup and finalizing the meshes or cages in Blender
- Exporting your scene for high-fidelity renders in another 3D application
- Creating 3D content (e.g., Part-based models, Editable Meshes, Cube3D generations) in Roblox and making modifications in an external application
How to use glTF Export
First, enable the glTF export beta through File > Beta Features > glTF Export
You can either export a set of selected items from Explorer, or you can export your entire place.
- To export a set of selected items from Explorer, right click, navigate to “Save / Export,” and click “Export as glTF”
- To export your entire place navigate to the “File” menu, then click “Export as glTF”
A dialog box will appear, allowing you to customize export settings. Here you can specify whether you want to include skinning, textures and/or cages.
- Skinning: When checked, the exported file will include skinning data such as bones and dynamic heads if present in Roblox Studio.
- Textures: When checked, the exported file will include texture data such as decals and PBR textures if present in Roblox Studio.
- Cages: When checked, the exported file will include cage data if present in Roblox Studio.
Clicking “Export” will run a permissions check, and warn you if any assets cannot be exported. From here, you can right click an asset and select “Show in Explorer” to see more details.
Clicking “Export” again will open a file dialog, where you can choose the name and path of the exported glTF file. Following the glTF 2.0 specification, the output will be a single .gltf file that includes embedded textures.
Export permissions
We’re excited to enable a powerful feature that can help you optimize your asset iteration flows. However we want to be mindful of the asset creator’s intent, so we’re first restricting this beta with respect to certain classes of assets you don’t own. We are working to improve our permission system powering glTF export, but it does not currently support all the use cases for assets that you (or your group) do not own at scale, including collaborators’ shared assets and assets acquired from the Creator Store.
These assets CAN be exported:
- Assets directly uploaded to your account
- Assets directly uploaded to one of your group accounts
- Mesh and Image assets that have been explicitly shared with you or your group (You can find assets shared with you in the revamped Asset Manager beta.)
These assets CANNOT be exported:
- Avatar Marketplace assets
- Acquired Creator Store assets
- Shared collaborator assets where the underlying Meshes/Images have not been explicitly shared
- Other Open Use (public) assets that have not been explicitly shared with you or your group
We know the current restrictions may not meet all creators’ needs, but we are releasing the beta because it addresses many initial use cases. We’d love to hear about the additional use cases you’d like to see supported to help us improve the system.
Note: These permission restrictions only apply to glTF Export, and do not apply to the current OBJ exporter.
How is this different from the existing OBJ export feature?
Previously, Roblox only supported exporting to an OBJ file, which is a more limited file format. glTF export supports the following key features that the OBJ export does not support:
- Preserving Scene Hierarchy
- PBR textures
- Skinning
- Rigs
- Vertex Colors
- Instances
- Dynamic Heads
Limitations
glTF Export has the following limitations:
- Animations are not exported (but let us know if you want it and how you would like to use it)
- Layered clothing won’t always be positioned correctly, and it will not deform to the avatars body outside of Roblox
- Cannot export assets that you or your group don’t own, and were not explicitly shared with you. See more details above.
Known bugs:
- We’re investigating issues where some FACS rigs don’t export correctly
- We are aware of an issue that causes exports with ONLY non-numeric asset ids (like the spawn location decal) to hang indefinitely. This should be a rare scenario, and a fix is in-progress. As a workaround, include a numeric asset in your export or remove the non-numeric ones.
What’s next
We are eager to receive your feedback on this new beta feature. We are also investigating the expansion of permissions to offer greater flexibility. Your input is crucial! Please share your specific use cases that you would like to see supported.
