WebGL Ripper — extract 3D models from websites

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A browser extension that rips 3D models and textures from WebGL pages and saves them as GLB (glTF 2.0), OBJ + MTL + PNG, STL or USDZ — ready for Blender, Unity, Unreal, Godot, a 3D printer or AR on an iPhone. It records one rendered frame, shows what it found in a 3D preview right in the page, and downloads the meshes you choose — with their textures, material colors, normals, positions in the scene and the page's camera. Animated characters are saved in the pose you see, and a free Blender add-on opens every rip in Blender by itself.

Works with three.js, Babylon.js, PlayCanvas, Unity WebGL, Godot, Emscripten apps and plain WebGL 1 / WebGL 2 code, in Chrome, Edge, Brave, Opera and Firefox.

Features

• GLB, OBJ, STL or USDZ. One .glb with embedded textures and PBR materials (base color, normal, emissive, occlusion, metal/roughness, colors, transparency), a ZIP with OBJ, MTL and PNG files, an .stl for 3D printing or a .usdz for AR on iPhone and iPad. Smaller GLB compresses the geometry and stores opaque textures as JPEG: a model with a photo texture went from 760 KB to 136 KB.
• Straight into Blender. The free Blender add-on imports every new rip as soon as it is downloaded, into a collection of its own, framed in the view — with the page's camera when the GLB has one.
• Characters in their pose. On WebGL 2 pages skinned and morphed characters are saved the way they are on the screen, not in the T-pose.
• Preview before download. Turn the scene around, click meshes to include or exclude them, choose the format. Press V to record a 6-second 360° turntable video of the selection.
• Rip one object by clicking it. Press Shift+Insert and click the object: only that object is saved. Works through post-processing too.
• Ready to import. The model is centered and stands on the floor, meshes keep their places, missing normals are computed (hard edges stay hard), vertices drawn separately are welded back together. GLB files carry the page's camera, so Blender opens the same view.
• History of rips. Every rip with thumbnails, the site and the file; show the file in its folder or open it again.
• English and Russian interface, picked from the browser's language or chosen in the options.
• Clean output. Shadow-map and depth passes, move and axis gizmos, outlines, full-screen post-processing passes and duplicate draws are left out automatically; sky domes are offered unselected.
• Exact textures. Saved byte for byte at their real size, including compressed (DXT/S3TC), float, half-float and luminance textures, and color under transparent pixels. Models from AI generators such as Meshy (optimized glTF with compressed texture coordinates) keep their texture mapping.
• Light on the page. Nothing is hooked per draw call until you press the hotkey; exports are streamed in small pieces, so even 4K-textured models don't run the tab out of memory. Nothing is ever sent anywhere.

Pick mode	The picked object in the preview

Faster and better than the original

This is a rewrite of WebGL Ripper 0.6 by Rilshrink. Both versions were installed as extensions in the same Chrome and run on the same test pages (full comparison and method):

Test page	Original 0.6	This version
three.js scene with shadows and post-processing	4 objects, all at the origin, no normals; a 256×256 texture saved as 4096×4096 and put on every mesh; page froze for 0.4–0.6 s	4 objects in place with normals, colors and the right texture: GLB in 0.17 s, longest frame 41 ms
3000 draw calls per frame	no file after 3 minutes, page frozen, +1.3 GB of memory	0.28 s as GLB (+42 MB), 0.7 s as OBJ ZIP (+78 MB)
Model with 250 000 vertices and two 4K textures	3.9 s, page frozen for 1.5 s, +590 MB (+226 MB GPU), 60 MB ZIP, model moved off its place	1.6 s as GLB, 2.7 s as a 5.6 MB OBJ ZIP; longest frame under 0.2 s, +169–245 MB
Unity / Emscripten-style memory	garbage (every vertex at 3.4·10³⁸)	exact
WebGL context created while the page loads	not captured at all	captured
Frame time with 3000 draw calls (no capture running)	+0.4–0.5 ms, about twice as slow	no difference beyond measurement noise (±0.1 ms)

Installation

1. Download the package for your browser from the latest release: webglripper-<version>-chrome.zip or webglripper-<version>-firefox.zip.
2. Chrome / Edge / Brave / Opera: unzip it, open chrome://extensions/ (edge://extensions/ in Edge), enable Developer mode, click Load unpacked and select the unzipped folder.
3. Firefox: open about:debugging#/runtime/this-firefox, click Load Temporary Add-on… and select the -firefox.zip. Temporary add-ons are removed when Firefox restarts.

Reload pages that were already open. To update, replace the folder with the new version and click ⟳ on the extension's card.

WebGL Ripper is not published on the Chrome Web Store or any other store. Copies found there are not from this project and may contain malicious code.

How to rip

1. Open a page with WebGL content and wait until the model is visible.
2. Press Insert (or click the toolbar button → Rip next frame).
3. The preview opens. Click meshes to include or exclude them, choose the format, press Download (or Enter; Esc cancels). V records a turntable video of the selection.

Just one object? Press Shift+Insert (or Pick object in the popup) and click it.

The toolbar popup shows what is on the page and what the last rip saved: every object with a thumbnail, its triangles, texture and size, and what was left out (gizmos, helpers, shadow passes, backgrounds).

History in the popup lists every rip: thumbnails, the site, the numbers and the file. Show in folder and Open find the download again (the browser asks once for access to your downloads). The history keeps the last 50 rips, only in this browser; turn it off in the options.

The toolbar badge shows GL when the page has WebGL content, PICK while waiting for your click, REC while a frame is recorded, SEL while the preview is open, and then the number of saved meshes. If a scene only redraws when something changes, move the camera a little after pressing the hotkey. No Insert key? Choose other hotkeys in the options, or assign browser shortcuts in chrome://extensions/shortcuts (Firefox: Add-ons → ⚙ → Manage Extension Shortcuts).

What you get

GLB (default): webglripper_<site>_<date>-<time>.glb — one file with every mesh, its textures and material. In Blender: File → Import → glTF 2.0 (.glb/.gltf).

OBJ:

webglripper_<site>_<date>-<time>.zip
├── mesh_000.obj …        one OBJ per mesh (or a single scene.obj, see options)
├── materials.mtl         materials: colors and texture maps
├── textures/tex_000.png  textures, byte-exact
├── model.glb             with the format "GLB + OBJ"
└── rip-info.json         what was captured: attributes, textures and transforms of every mesh

In Blender: File → Import → Wavefront (.obj), select all OBJ files (or scene.obj).

STL: webglripper_<site>_<date>-<time>.stl — the selected meshes as one binary STL, Z up, for slicers such as PrusaSlicer, Cura or Bambu Studio.

USDZ: webglripper_<site>_<date>-<time>.usdz — a USD scene with materials and base color textures. Opens in AR Quick Look on iPhone and iPad, and in Blender (File → Import → Universal Scene Description).

Video: webglripper_<site>_<date>-<time>_turntable.webm — V in the preview turns the selected meshes once around in 6 seconds.

Blender add-on

Rips can open in Blender by themselves. Download blender/webglripper_blender.py, install it in Blender (Edit → Preferences → Add-ons → Install from Disk) and enable WebGL Ripper. From then on, every new webglripper_* GLB, STL, USDZ or OBJ zip that lands in your downloads folder is imported into a collection of its own and framed in the 3D view; the page's camera becomes the scene camera when the scene has none. The panel is in the sidebar of the 3D view (N → WebGL Ripper): watch on/off, the folder, Import latest rip. Details are in blender/README.md.

Options

Option	Default
Language	Automatic	English or Russian; automatic follows the browser.
Keep a history of rips	on	Thumbnails, site and file of the last 50 rips, stored only in this browser.
Hotkey	Insert	Rips the current tab.
Pick hotkey	Shift + Insert	The next click on the page rips only the object under the cursor.
Preview before download	on	Shows the capture in the page so you can choose what to keep.
Skip duplicate draws	on	Ignores geometry drawn again by depth or shadow passes.
Skip viewer overlays	on	Ignores axis gizmos, helpers in a small viewport and post-processing passes.
Characters in their current pose	on	Skinned and morphed meshes as they are on the page (WebGL 2).
Format	GLB	GLB, OBJ, both, STL or USDZ.
Smaller GLB	off	Quantized geometry (KHR_mesh_quantization) and JPEG for opaque textures.
Include the page's camera	on	Adds the camera the page used to GLB files.
Download OBJ as ZIP	on	One file per capture instead of one download per file.
OBJ layout	One OBJ per mesh	Or a single scene.obj, or both.
Place meshes in the scene	on	Applies the model matrix found in the shader.
Move to the origin	on	Centers the export and stands it on the floor.
Smooth normals when missing	on	Computes normals for meshes drawn without any; hard edges stay hard.
Export vertex colors	on	v x y z r g b in OBJ, COLOR_0 in GLB.
Merge duplicate vertices	on	Reconnects triangles that the page drew as separate vertices.
Unflip textures	on	Keeps UVs and images consistent for OBJ viewers.
Fallback texture size	4096 × 4096	Only used when a texture's size could not be detected.
Advanced		Extra attribute, sampler and matrix names for engines that aren't recognized.
Debug logging	off	Prints details to the page's developer console.

How it works

In short: the engine runs inside the page before any page script, wraps a few WebGL functions and, when you press the hotkey, records every draw call of the next frame — the geometry, the textures bound to it and the matrices in its shader. The recorded draws are cleaned up (shadow passes, gizmos and duplicates removed, vertices welded, normals computed), shown in the preview and written as GLB or OBJ in small streamed pieces. Pick mode reads the pixel under the cursor after every draw call to find the one that drew the object you clicked.

The whole story — hooks, matrix and texture heuristics, readback of compressed and float textures, streaming export, the preview, pick mode, performance and privacy — is in How WebGL Ripper works.

FAQ

Which sites does it work on? Any page that draws with WebGL in the browser: product viewers and configurators, 3D galleries, games made with Unity, Godot or PlayCanvas, three.js and Babylon.js demos. It doesn't work on pages that render on a server and stream video, or that draw from a Web Worker with OffscreenCanvas.

Are animated characters saved in their pose? On WebGL 2 pages, yes: WebGL Ripper runs the page's own vertex shader once more with transform feedback and reads back where it moved every vertex. WebGL 1 has no way to read that back, so there characters are saved in their bind pose (often a T-pose). Bones and animations are not exported.

What permissions does it need? Access to the pages you visit (to find WebGL content and capture it), storage (for the settings and the history) and — only when you first press Show in folder in the history — access to your downloads.

The export is empty or meshes are in the wrong place. Enable Debug logging and look at rip-info.json for the attribute and uniform names the page uses, then add them under Options → Advanced. Please open an issue with the site and the file.

Does it send my data anywhere? No. The extension makes no network requests; everything happens in your browser.

Limitations

• On WebGL 1 pages, GPU-skinned characters are saved in their bind pose. Bones and animations are not exported.
• WebGL inside a Web Worker (OffscreenCanvas transferred to a worker) can't be captured.
• Instanced draws export one copy of the instanced geometry.
• WEBGL_multi_draw batches don't expose per-object transforms; their meshes stay in local space.
• Exporting happens inside the page: very large models still need some free memory (about 250 MB for a 1M vertex model with four 4K textures on top of what the page uses).
• Pages inside sandboxed iframes without download permission can't save files; open the iframe's address in a tab.

Responsible use

Models, textures and scenes on websites belong to their authors. Rip only what you are allowed to use — your own work, assets under a permissive license, or content you have permission for — and respect the site's terms and licenses.

Development

There is no build step: the repository folder is the extension (node scripts/build.mjs makes the release packages in dist/).

• webglripper.js – capture engine, runs in the page (MAIN world) at document_start
• viewer.js – preview and pick UI, in the page, isolated in a closed shadow root
• bridge.js – content script between the engine and the extension (settings, hotkeys, progress)
• background.js – sends captures to every frame of a tab, toolbar badge, keyboard shortcuts, the history
• popup.*, options.*, history.*, ui.css, settings.js – user interface and shared defaults
• i18n.js, _locales/ – English and Russian texts (node tests/i18n-check.mjs checks that every text is translated)
• blender/ – the Blender add-on

Tests run in real browsers through their automation protocols and need only Node.js 22+:

node tests/run-chrome.mjs
node tests/run-firefox.mjs
node tests/run-blender.mjs
node tests/compare/compare.mjs --original=<folder of WebGL Ripper 0.6>

See CHANGELOG.md for what changed in each version.

Credits

Based on WebGLRipper by Rilshrink. MIT License.

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