How to convert a PNG to OBJ
- 1
Drop a PNG
A logo or icon with a transparent background works best. JPG and WEBP work too.
- 2
Pick extrude or relief
Extrude cuts out the shape and gives it one height. Relief turns brightness into height.
- 3
Choose colour and axes
Texture (OBJ + MTL + PNG), vertex colours or plain. Y up for Blender and games, Z up for CAD.
- 4
Download the OBJ
Check the 3D preview, then save. A textured model comes as a zip with all three files.
What you get in the OBJ
- Top
- The picture, mapped exactly onto the raised shape (texture mode), or one colour per vertex (vertex mode).
- Sides and base
- Plain walls in the picture's main colour, so the model looks right from any angle.
- Size
- Real sizes in millimetres or metres. OBJ has no unit, so pick the one your app expects.
- Mesh
- A closed shape with outward-facing normals, split into "top" and "side" groups for easy editing.
Frequently Asked Questions
Yes, but a PNG is a flat picture with no depth, so the converter has to add it. This free tool cuts out the shape (or uses brightness as height), raises it, and saves a standard OBJ with the picture as its texture.
Yes. Texture mode saves the OBJ with an MTL file and the picture as a PNG texture, in one zip. Keep the three files together when you import. Vertex colour mode stores the colours inside the OBJ itself; Blender, MeshLab and three.js read them, some other apps ignore them.
Not in the free mode: a single picture does not show the back or sides of an object, so the free tool makes a raised shape. For a full object (a toy, a character, a product), use the AI mode. Our Image to 3D tool builds the whole model on our servers and uses credits.
Yes. With Extrude and Automatic shape, the transparent parts of a PNG are left empty and the rest becomes solid. For a picture without transparency, pixels darker than the threshold become the shape, or tick Invert for the opposite.
Blender, Maya, Unity and most game engines expect Y up; CAD tools and 3D printing slicers usually expect Z up. Pick millimetres for printing and CAD, metres for Blender and game engines, where 1 unit is 1 metre.
No. In the free mode the model is built on your device and the OBJ is saved straight from your browser. Only the AI mode sends the image to our servers.
Yes. The model is a closed shape, so slicers read it, but they ignore colours. Pick Z up and millimetres, or use our PNG to STL converter, which saves a print-ready STL directly.