STL to FBX Converter
Convert an STL to a self-contained FBX with a default material, ready to open and finish in Maya, 3ds Max or Blender. Runs in your browser.
Drag & drop your STL file here
or click to browse
Supported Formats
Format Information
Source Format
STL.stl
STL (Stereolithography)
STL is an additive-manufacturing format from the 1990s: a flat list of triangles and nothing else. It has no concept of a scene, a material or a texture, which is why it is the lingua franca of 3D printing and also its most lossy interchange format.
What it carries: Triangle positions and, optionally, one facet normal per triangle. No UVs, no vertex colours, no materials, no node hierarchy, no animation.
Open a STL file in the viewerTarget Format
FBX.fbx
FBX (Filmbox Scene)
FBX is Autodesk's scene format, written by Maya, 3ds Max and MotionBuilder. It is a compact container for a whole DCC scene, which is why it is the usual hand-off format when a model comes back from a modelling or animation package.
What it carries: Meshes, UVs, vertex colours, materials with embedded texture maps, a bone hierarchy, skinning, and keyframe animation clips. Blend shapes and Autodesk-specific property types are not read by this converter.
Open a FBX file in the viewerAbout this conversion
A print file into Autodesk's scene format. The triangles are written as an FBX node with a default material, ready to be opened and worked on in Maya, 3ds Max or Blender.
Why convert STL to FBX
- Open a printed or scanned model in a DCC tool for cleanup, retopology or rendering.
- Take a shape from a slicer into a modelling pipeline that expects FBX.
- Get a single file you can send to a 3D artist for finishing.
What happens during the conversion
Geometry
The triangle list is written as a single FBX mesh node with the STL's facet normals carried across as vertex normals. There is no hierarchy to preserve, because STL has none.
Materials and textures
None. A single default material is written, since STL has no colour, texture or UV information. Appearance has to be added in the DCC tool.
Common use cases
- Retopologising or cleaning up a printed or scanned model.
- Rendering a scan that arrived as an STL.
- Preparing a shape for a DCC-based asset pipeline.
Limitations of this conversion
- STL carries no texture or colour data, so materials have to be authored after the conversion.
- STL has no hierarchy, so the result is a single object with no scene structure.
- FBX is a much larger container than STL, so expect a noticeably bigger file.
How to convert STL to FBX
Three steps in the browser. Nothing is uploaded to a server, so an unwieldy file is limited only by your own device's memory.
Upload your .stl
Binary and ASCII STL are both supported, and the file's facet normals are read alongside the triangle positions.
Convert to FBX
The triangles are written as an FBX mesh with a default material.
Import it in your DCC tool
Assign materials there, and check the import scale if the STL came from a slicer.
Related tools and formats
Other conversions from this format
Check the file in a viewer
Frequently Asked Questions
Questions people ask when turning STL files into FBX.
Looking for a different direction? See every supported conversion.