Import and export
Every studio's native format, what it reads, what it writes, and what travels between studios without a file at all.
🔎 Looking for one extension in particular? aukimi.com/extensions lists every format the suite reads and writes, with a search field and a filter by category, faster than reading down a table when you already know what you are holding.
Native formats#
Each studio saves its own document. These are the files a cloud sync uploads, and the files an export produces when you want one studio's work on its own:
| Studio | Extension |
|---|---|
| Engine | .engine |
| Pixel Editor | .editor |
| Animator | .avf |
| Sculpt | .sculpt3d |
| Retopo | .retopo |
| Pigment | .p3d |
| Render | .lumen |
| Matter | .matter |
| Inkwell | .ink |
| Vectra | .vectra |
| Composer | .comp |
| Fusion | .fusion |
| Pulse | .daw |
| PDF Studio | .pdfdoc |
They are JSON, and each one carries the studio's state plus its binary assets and, where the studio supports it, its undo history. A native file opens standalone, in its own studio, without the project it came from.
PDF Studio's document is a list of pages, not a PDF. The PDF is what it exports, and it does not re-open.
Interchange formats#
| Reads | Writes | |
|---|---|---|
| Sculpt | .obj .glb .stl .ply .3dproj | the same |
| Retopo | .obj .glb .fbx | the same, plus baked maps |
| Pigment | .glb .gltf .obj | .glb, plus the texture set as images |
| Render | .glb .gltf .obj .fbx .scene | rendered images and sequences, and a public link |
| Matter | .png .jpg, SVG, a surface capture | PBR maps as .png .jpg .hdr .tga .tiff; glTF / GLB; MaterialX |
| Inkwell | .png .jpg, .abr brush packs | .png, .jpg, PSD |
| Pixel Editor | .png .jpg .aseprite, .gpl palettes | the same, plus GIF, APNG, atlas, .tilemap |
| Vectra | .svg | .svg .pdf .eps .png .jpg .webp .avif .json |
| Composer | images | .png .jpg .svg, and CSS / SwiftUI / Jetpack Compose |
| Animator | .anim .json .bvh, video | sprite sheet · PNG sequence · GIF · WebP · WebM · APNG · Lottie · SVG (SMIL) · Spine · glTF · BVH · AVF runtime · JSON |
| Fusion | video, audio, images | .mp4 and the WebCodecs formats; EDL · FCP XML · AAF · CDL; tracking data |
| Pulse | .wav .mp3, MIDI | .wav .flac, stems (one WAV per unmuted track), MIDI |
| Engine | .glb .gltf .obj .fbx .png .svg .mp4 .webm .mov .scene | a web build, a native desktop/mobile build |
| PDF Studio | .png .jpg .webp .gif .bmp .avif | .pdf |
Two exits are not the same thing. A studio's native file keeps the work editable; an interchange file keeps it usable somewhere else. Animator and Fusion have the longest lists here because an animation and a cut are worth nothing until they land in something that plays them.
About FBX#
FBX is Autodesk's format and it is not natively readable in a browser. Where it appears above, it is handled through a converter. glTF / GLB is the format to prefer for anything crossing between tools; it is what the whole 3D pipeline here speaks natively. In Blender: File → Export → glTF 2.0.
What travels without a file#
Most of the time you do not need an export at all. Studios hand work to each other as typed objects, over the file library or with a direct Send to:
| Type | Produced by | Accepted by |
|---|---|---|
| High-poly mesh | Sculpt | Sculpt, Retopo, Pigment, Render, Animator, Engine |
| Clean-topology mesh | Retopo | Sculpt, Retopo, Pigment, Render, Animator, Engine |
| Textured mesh | Pigment | Pigment, Render, Animator, Engine |
| 3D scene | Render | Render, Engine |
| PBR material set | Matter | Sculpt, Pigment, Engine |
| Surface capture | Inkwell | Matter, PDF Studio |
| Image | Inkwell, Composer, Matter | Pixel Editor, Vectra, Composer, Inkwell, Animator, Fusion, Matter, PDF Studio, Engine |
| Pixel art | Pixel Editor | Pixel Editor, Inkwell, Composer, Animator, Matter, PDF Studio, Engine |
| Vector art | Vectra | Vectra, Composer, PDF Studio, Engine |
| Vectra objects | Vectra | Animator, Engine, as a HUD hierarchy |
| Composition | Composer | PDF Studio |
| Animation | Animator | Fusion, Engine |
| 2D rig | Animator, Engine | Animator, Engine |
| Video project | Fusion | Engine |
| Audio project | Pulse | Pulse |
Three things worth knowing:
- A Matter material arrives mapped, not as seven loose PNGs: base colour lands in base colour, roughness in roughness.
- A Vectra mock-up sent to the Engine arrives as structure: a HUD hierarchy that can be laid out and scripted, rather than as a flat picture.
- PDF Studio produces nothing. It is the only studio with an empty exports list, and deliberately so: its output is a PDF file, not something another studio consumes. It accepts five types and hands back none.
The clipboard#
Cmd/Ctrl + C and V work across studios, and the clipboard carries
typed content rather than pixels. When a destination understands the type, it
gets the real thing; when it does not, it gets the best representation it can
handle. That is what lets a Vectra shape land in Inkwell as vector rather than as
a screenshot of itself.
Cmd/Ctrl + Shift + V offers the available formats explicitly.
Whole projects#
A project can be exported as JSON from the dashboard, and imported the same way, that is the whole thing, every studio's state at once. Cloud save does the same job continuously; see Projects and documents.