LightWave Object .lwo
LightWave 3D objects, layers and surfaces intact.
What an .lwo file holds
LWO is NewTek LightWave 3D’s object format, an IFF-chunked binary file holding layered geometry along with LightWave’s surface definitions. LightWave dominated broadcast graphics and television VFX for years (Babylon 5 and countless title sequences were built in it), so a great deal of archive geometry still lives in .lwo files.
Commonly seen in: LightWave 3D, broadcast graphics archives, legacy VFX libraries.
| Data | Stored in LWO |
|---|---|
| Geometry | Yes |
| Materials and colour | Yes |
| Texture maps | Yes |
| Animation and rigs | No |
| Scene hierarchy | No |
| Read here | Yes |
| Written here | No |
Tested against a real file
The last sweep loaded earth_cylindrical_x.lwo from Assimp test models with its 3 sidecar files through the viewer on this site: 528 triangles across 1 meshes and 1 materials, in 1.9 seconds. Every format's result is on the test results page, run 2026-09-08.
Convert LWO to another format
Every pairing has a page saying what survives the trip.
Other things to do with an .lwo file
Questions about LWO
How do I open an .lwo 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 LWO a good format to archive in?
LWO stores geometry, materials and colour, texture maps. 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 LWO 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.