Draw to 3D: turn pixel art into a 3D model
Draw a sprite on a grid or drop in an image and watch it become a 3D model while you draw. Choose flat voxels, rounded edges or a puffy inflated look, then export GLB, OBJ, STL or PNG. Everything runs in your browser.
Start with an example
Four sprites to play with. Each one opens with its own 3D style.
Draw something and it appears here in 3D.
How to turn pixel art into 3D
- Draw on the grid (8 to 64 cells, square or rectangular) with pen, line, rectangle, ellipse and fill. Mirror X and Mirror Y draw both halves at once.
- Or import a picture: open, drop or paste a PNG, JPG or GIF. It is scaled to the grid, reduced to your palette in OKLab and its background can be removed automatically or with a click.
- Pick a 3D style: Voxel (flat extrusion), Rounded (bevelled outer edges) or Inflate (a soft cushion). Give single colors more depth, for example a thicker outline.
- Check the model with turntable, light presets, shadow, game view and wireframe. The counter shows triangles and vertices after greedy meshing.
- Export a GLB with a small palette texture, OBJ and MTL as a ZIP, a closed STL for 3D printing, PNG images, the project as JSON or a share link.
Three 3D styles
- Voxel
- Every pixel becomes a block of the chosen depth. Classic voxel art with crisp edges and flat colors, the lightest mesh of the three.
- Rounded
- The outer silhouette gets a bevel, round or chamfered, while steps between colors stay sharp. Looks like a cast metal pin or a plastic toy.
- Inflate
- The drawing puffs up like a cushion: thin at the outline, thickest in the middle of every shape. Great for icons, hearts, slimes and stickers.
Keyboard shortcuts
- B · E · G
- pen, eraser, fill
- L · R · O
- line, rectangle, ellipse (Shift: 45°, square, circle)
- I · M
- eyedropper, move
- X · Y
- mirror X, mirror Y
- [ · ]
- brush size
- Ctrl+Z · Ctrl+Y
- undo, redo
- + · − · 0
- zoom in, zoom out, fit
- Space + drag
- pan
- Alt + click
- pick a color
- Right click
- erase
- 1 · 2 · 3
- Voxel, Rounded, Inflate
Frequently asked questions
How does Draw to 3D turn pixel art into a 3D model?
Every filled pixel becomes a column of the chosen depth. Faces between neighbors of equal height are never created, and greedy meshing merges areas of one color and height into large rectangles. In the Voxel style the 32 × 32 sword example needs 1,374 triangles, 1,456 without merging and 5,256 as separate voxel cubes.
Can I convert an image to voxels?
Yes. Open, drop or paste a PNG, JPG or GIF (the first frame). The image is scaled to the grid with area averaging, reduced to the active palette or to an automatic palette in OKLab, and the background is removed from the border or with a click. Upscaled pixel art is detected and imported at its native size.
Is the STL ready for 3D printing?
The STL is a closed mesh: every edge belongs to exactly two triangles. It lies on its back, uses millimeters and follows your scale. Pixels that touch only at a corner would share a single edge, so the tool keeps them apart by a hair. For a sturdy print, connect them with an extra pixel.
What do the GLB and OBJ files contain?
One mesh with one material and a tiny palette texture (4 × 4 texels per color, nearest filtering), so the file stays small and imports cleanly into Unity, Godot, Unreal and Blender. The pivot sits at the bottom center and the size follows your scale (1 pixel = 1 cm by default). The GLB can use vertex colors instead.
Who owns the 3D models I create?
You do. Your drawing is your own work, and Grab3D adds no license terms, watermark or account. Use the exports in commercial games, prototypes, prints or client work.
Is my image uploaded anywhere?
No. Drawing, image import, meshing and every export run in your browser. A share link stores the drawing in the part of the address after #, which browsers never send to a server.
Need finished assets next to your creations? Every model in the Grab3D library is free under CC0. About the license