OBJExporter Guide

Basic Structure

OBJ is a text-based 3D geometry format:

# Comment
v x y z        # Vertex position
vn x y z       # Vertex normal
f v1 v2 v3     # Face (triangle)
f v1/vt1/vn1 v2/vt2/vn2 v3/vt3/vn3  # Face with texture/normal indices

Example:

# Cube
v 0 0 0
v 1 0 0
v 1 1 0
v 0 1 0
f 1 2 3
f 1 3 4

Three.js OBJExporter

Three.js provides

OBJExporter

in examples:

import { OBJExporter } from 'three/examples/jsm/exporters/OBJExporter.js';

const exporter = new OBJExporter();
const objString = exporter.parse(object3D);

// Write to file (Node.js)
import fs from 'fs';
fs.writeFileSync('output.obj', objString);

Exporting with World Transforms

To export geometry in world coordinates:

// Update world matrices first
root.updateMatrixWorld(true);

// Clone and transform geometry
const worldGeometry = mesh.geometry.clone();
worldGeometry.applyMatrix4(mesh.matrixWorld);

// Create new mesh for export
const exportMesh = new THREE.Mesh(worldGeometry);
const objData = exporter.parse(exportMesh);

Merging Multiple Geometries

import { mergeGeometries } from 'three/examples/jsm/utils/BufferGeometryUtils.js';

const geometries = [];
root.traverse((obj) => {
  if (obj instanceof THREE.Mesh) {
    const geom = obj.geometry.clone();
    geom.applyMatrix4(obj.matrixWorld);
    geometries.push(geom);
  }
});

const merged = mergeGeometries(geometries);
const mergedMesh = new THREE.Mesh(merged);
const objData = exporter.parse(mergedMesh);

Node.js ES Module Setup

For running Three.js in Node.js:

// package.json
{ "type": "module" }

// script.js
import * as THREE from 'three';
import { OBJExporter } from 'three/examples/jsm/exporters/OBJExporter.js';