Blender .blend
Blender’s own file, read without opening Blender.
What a .blend file holds
A .blend file is a dump of Blender’s internal data structures plus a schema, its “DNA”, describing their layout, which is how Blender can open files written by any version of itself. Reading one from outside means walking that schema and knowing what the fields mean, and the second part is where most outside readers date, because Blender has moved its mesh data three times: MFace up to 2.62, MPoly and MLoop through 3.6, and generic attribute layers from 4.0. Our reader follows whichever the file’s own DNA declares, so 2.5 through 4.2 all open, Zstandard-compressed saves included. Expect meshes, object transforms and material colours to come through; modifiers, node-based shaders, curves and simulation data are evaluated by Blender rather than stored, so they do not survive the trip.
Commonly seen in: Blender.
| Data | Stored in BLEND |
|---|---|
| Geometry | Yes |
| Materials and colour | Yes |
| Texture maps | Yes |
| Animation and rigs | No |
| Scene hierarchy | Yes |
| Read here | Yes |
| Written here | No |
Tested against a real file
The last sweep loaded scene_42.blend from written by Blender 4.2 (bpy) through the viewer on this site: 329 triangles across 5 meshes and 3 materials, in 2.2 seconds. Every format's result is on the test results page, run 2026-09-08.
Which way is up
BLEND is a Z-up format, which most of the rest of 3D is not. Files are read exactly as written and stood up for you in the viewer; the converter has a switch for it, so a model does not arrive in the next program lying on its side.
Convert BLEND to another format
Every pairing has a page saying what survives the trip.
Other things to do with a .blend file
Questions about BLEND
How do I open a .blend file?
Drop it into the viewer on this site and it opens in the browser, with the scene tree, the materials and the mesh statistics. Nothing is uploaded. If you want it in another program instead, convert it to GLB, which almost everything reads.
Is BLEND a good format to archive in?
BLEND stores geometry, materials and colour, texture maps, scene hierarchy. Anything outside that list will not be in the file at all, so archive the original alongside it if the surfacing or the rig matters.
Does converting BLEND lose quality?
Geometry is copied vertex for vertex, so the shape does not degrade. What gets lost is whatever the target format has no field for: convert to STL and the materials go, convert to OBJ and the animation goes. The comparison table on each converter page says exactly which.
Formats that hold the same things
Or go back to the full format reference.