Reference
- Menu:
File ‣ Import/Export ‣ Wavefront (.obj)
OBJ format is a popular plain text format, however, it has only basic geometry and material support.
Note
There is no support for armatures, lights, cameras, empty objects, parenting, or transformations.See Compatibility for more information.
Importing#
Import geometry and curves to the OBJ format.
If there is a matching .MTL for the OBJ then its materials will be imported too.
General#
- Scale
Value by which to scale the imported objects in relation to the world’s origin.
- Clamp Bounding Box
OBJ-files often vary greatly in scale, this setting clamps the imported file to a fixed size.
- Forward Axis, Up Axis
Since many applications use a different axis for ‘Up’, these are axis conversion for these settings,Forward and Up axes – By mapping these to different axes you can convert rotationsbetween applications default up and forward axes.
Blender uses Y Forward, Z Up (since the front view looks along the +Y direction).For example, it’s common for applications to use Y as the up axis, in that case -Z Forward, Y Up is needed.
Options#
- Split By Object
Import each OBJ “object name” group (
o) as a separate object.- Split By Group
Import each OBJ “object name” group (
g) as a separate object.- Vertex Groups
Import OBJ groups as vertex groups.
- Validate Meshes
Check the imported mesh for corrupt data and fix it if necessary.When disabled, erroneous data may cause crashes displaying or editing the meshes.This option will make the importing slower but is recommended, as data errors are not always obvious.
- Path Separator
Character used to separate an object’s name into a hierarchicalstructure using Collections.
Exporting#
Export geometry and curves to the OBJ format.
General#
- Include: Selected Only
Only export the selected objects. Otherwise export all objects in the scene.
- Scale
Global scale to use on export.
- Forward Axis, Up Axis
Since many applications use a different axis for ‘Up’, there are axis conversion settings,Forward and Up axis – By mapping these to different axis you can convert rotationsbetween applications default up and forward axis.
Blender uses Y Forward, Z Up (since the front view looks along the +Y direction).For example, its common for applications to use Y as the up axis, in that case -Z Forward, Y Up is needed.
Geometry Properties#
- UV Coordinates
Write out the active UV layers coordinates from Blender.
- Normals
Write out Blender’s face and vertex normals (depending on the faces smooth setting).
Mostly this isn’t needed since most applications will calculate theirown normals but to match Blender’s normal map textures you will need to write these too.
- Colors
Write out the active vertex colors attribute layer, if present. Colors are exported in“xyzrgb” OBJ extension format.
- Curves as NURBS
Write out NURBS curves as OBJ NURBS rather than converting to geometry.
- Triangulated Mesh
Write out quads as two triangles. Some programs only have very basic OBJ support and only support triangles.
- Apply Modifiers
Export objects using the evaluated mesh, meaning the resulting mesh after allModifiers have been calculated.
- Properties
For properties that have different settings for the viewport/final render pick which is used for output.One example where this is important is the Subdivision Surface Modifier.
- Viewport:
Use viewport properties.
- Render:
Use final render properties.
Grouping#
- Object Groups
Write out each Blender object as an OBJ object.
Note
Note that as far as Blender is concerned there is no difference between OBJ Groups and Objects,this option is only included for applications that treat them differently.
- Material Groups
Generate an OBJ group for each part of a geometry using a different material.
- Vertex Groups
Export the name of the vertex group of a face.It is approximated by choosing the vertex group with the most members among the vertices of a face.
- Smooth Groups
Write Blender’s sharp edges as smooth groups.
- Smooth Group Bitflags
Generate Bitflags for smooth Groups.
Materials#
Write out the MTL-file along with the OBJ. Most importers that support OBJ will also read the MTL-file.
- PBR Extensions
Export MTL library using PBR extensions (roughness, metallic, sheen, clearcoat, anisotropy, transmission).
- Path Mode
When referencing paths in exported files you may want some control as to the method used since absolute pathsmay only be correct on your own system. Relative paths, on the other hand, are more portablebut mean that you have to keep your files grouped when moving about on your local file system.In some cases, the path doesn’t matter since the target application will searcha set of predefined paths anyway so you have the option to strip the path too.
- Auto:
Uses relative paths for files which are in a subdirectory of the exported location,absolute for any directories outside that.
- Absolute:
Uses full paths.
- Relative:
Uses relative paths in every case (except when on a different drive on Windows).
- Match:
Uses relative / absolute paths based on the paths used in Blender.
- Strip Path:
Only write the filename and omit the path component.
- Copy:
Copy the file on exporting and reference it with a relative path.
Animation#
Exports a numbered OBJ for each frame from the start to the end frame.Please be aware that this can take quite a long time.
- Frame Start, End
The first and last frame to export, used to determine the range of exported frames.
Compatibility#
NURBS surfaces, text3D and metaballs are converted to meshes at export time.
