Animate a prop

Preparing your model

Prop Studio moves meshes, not triangles. Every part that should move has to be its own mesh in the file, at real size.

Moving parts are separate meshes

Prop Studio lists one part for every mesh in your file, and a part moves as a whole. A door that is its own mesh can swing. A door that is part of the same mesh as the wall cannot, because the studio does not cut models apart.

The empty Prop Studio: a drop area for a .glb file, and a card on what makes a good model (separate parts, real-world scale).

Split the model in Blender before you export it:

Select the object, press Tab for Edit Mode and select the faces of the part that moves, for example with L over it.
Press P and choose Selection. The faces become an object of their own.
Give the new object a clear name in the Outliner, such as door or lid. That name shows in the studio.

Parts that should move together, such as a door and its handle, can stay two meshes: you group them in the studio with Move together.

Size and axes

GTA V measures in metres, and so does Prop Studio: 1 unit in your file is 1 metre in game. A model exported at the wrong size stays at the wrong size, and the numbers you type for hinges and distances are wrong with it.

A house door is about 2 m high and 0.9 m wide; a garden gate leaf about 1.5 m wide.
In the studio Y points up, as in every GLB file. Blender uses Z as up, and its GLB export turns that into Y for you. So a door or gate turns around Y, a lid or a lever around X or Z.
The origin of the file, 0 / 0 / 0, is where the studio starts every hinge. Placing it on a hinge in Blender saves typing later.

File rules

Rule	Details
Format	Only `.glb`. In Blender: File, Export, glTF 2.0, format glTF Binary.
Size	Up to 100 MB.
Content	At least one mesh with a name.

Format
Only .glb. In Blender: File, Export, glTF 2.0, format glTF Binary.
Size
Up to 100 MB.
Content
At least one mesh with a name.

The message under the drop area says what is wrong:

Please choose a .glb file. The file is FBX, OBJ or something else. Export it as GLB.
File is larger than 100 MB. Reduce the textures or the polygon count.
No meshes found in this GLB. The file has no named mesh. Name the objects in Blender and export again.

Part names and textures

Each part is named after its mesh, in lower case with underscores, so Gate Left becomes gate_left. Meshes without a name do not appear in the list. Clear names make the next steps much easier, especially with ten parts.

The render takes the base colour texture of every material and packs it into the .ytd of the resource. A material with only a colour and no image gets that colour as a small texture. Normal, roughness and other maps are not used, and large textures are scaled down for the game.

Starting from one of your assets

A finished 3D model in your assets, whether generated, uploaded or imported, has an Animate button at the top of its page. It opens the model in Prop Studio, with no upload needed.

The header of a finished 3D model with the Animate button next to Share and Merge.

Note

Models from the 3D Generator are one mesh. They can spin, bob or slide as a whole, but a door in them cannot open on its own. For moving parts, split the model in Blender and upload the GLB.