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Md. Raju Ahmed, a freelance real-time 3D developer, reports shrinking a sneaker configurator’s GLB from 16.7 MB to 2.4 MB, an 86% reduction. He also reports 60 fps on a mid-range Android phone, with colorway and material changes handled client-side and no page reloads. These are the author’s figures for his own project. We haven’t reproduced them, and they aren’t a Three.js guarantee. The reusable part is his method: find out which data dominates the file, shrink that, load only the decoders the file needs, and test on weak hardware.
What the case study describes
Ahmed’s configurator lets users orbit a sneaker, switch colorways and materials, and watch the price update. The starting GLB was 16.7 MB. An inspection showed that textures were the large majority of the file. Geometry was a meaningful but smaller share, and everything else was negligible. The publication date of his DEV Community article could not be confirmed.
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“Measure the split before optimising.” — Md. Raju Ahmed
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That sentence is the thesis. A texture-heavy file will not be fixed by a geometry compressor, so the right first step depends on what the file contains.
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Step 1: Inspect the GLB before touching it
Ahmed uses glTF-Transform’s inspector to list meshes, materials and textures with their sizes:
npx gltf-transform inspect model.glbRead the output as a budget. If textures dominate, as they did in his file, work on image dimensions and encoding. If geometry dominates, work on mesh compression. Don’t apply a technique because it is popular. Apply it to the component that actually carries the bytes.
Step 2: Compress geometry with Draco, carefully
Draco acts on geometry only. Three.js documents it as mesh and point-cloud compression. Standalone Draco data carries no materials, textures, animation or node hierarchy. In a glTF it is one extension inside a larger file.
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Quantization settings
Ahmed’s example quantizes attributes separately: 14 bits for positions, 10 for normals, 12 for texture coordinates and 8 for color. These are his example values, not universal recommendations. He says the right tolerance depends on the asset’s scale and on how close the camera can get. His advice is to step the values down gradually and check for visible damage, such as faceting on curved surfaces or shifting UVs, at maximum zoom.
Loader setup
Three.js’s GLTFLoader needs a DRACOLoader attached through setDRACOLoader to read Draco-compressed glTF. Reuse one loader instance rather than creating several. Three.js chooses a JavaScript or WebAssembly decoder depending on what the browser supports.
const draco = new DRACOLoader();
draco.setDecoderPath('/decoders/draco/');
const loader = new GLTFLoader();
loader.setDRACOLoader(draco);Host the decoder yourself
The decoder files are a separate runtime dependency. Ahmed recommends serving and caching them yourself instead of relying on a third-party CDN you don’t control. The threejsassets setup guide gives the same advice: copy the decoder files from your installed Three.js version and serve them from your app. Keeping them in step with that version avoids mismatches.
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- 500mm/s and 20000 mm/s² Acceleration True High Speed: Don't wait around for your masterpieces. Lightning-fast printing speed lets you focus on creating, not waiting.
- Enclosed Design: Fully enclosed body improves print performance for advanced filaments. Automatic Bed Leveling: Say hello to high-quality, successful prints. Auto bed leveling makes 3D printing such an easy thing.
- Set Up in 15 Minutes: Spend more time printing and less time setting up. User-friendly design ensures a hassle-free assembly experience for all skill levels.
- Supported Filament: Ideal: PLA, PETG, TPU, PVA, PET ABS, ASA; Capable : PA, PC; Not Recommended: Carbon/Glass Fiber Reinforced Polymer.
Step 3: Right-size and compress textures
For this file, Ahmed says texture work separated the partial saving from Draco from the final 2.4 MB. His approach depends on the configurator’s constraints: the orbit is bounded and zoom has a maximum, so maps only need the detail that can actually reach the screen.
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1Repair Windows errors before they cause bigger problems2Fix the driver behind crashes, sound loss and screen glitches3Clear out junk files and repair common Windows errors- Base color: keep the most resolution here, since it is the most visible map.
- Normal maps: compress with care, because compression artifacts show up in lighting.
- Roughness, metalness and ambient occlusion: consider smaller maps where your scene allows.
KTX2 and Basis Universal
Ahmed encodes textures as KTX2 with Basis Universal. His main caution is that download size is not GPU memory. By his example, a 2048×2048 texture decoded as raw RGBA occupies 16 MB of GPU memory, however small the JPEG was on the wire. This figure is his explanatory example, not a benchmark we gathered. The point stands: put GPU memory in the budget and test on lower-powered phones.
Three.js needs a KTX2Loader for these textures. The threejsassets decoder guide says to call detectSupport(renderer) before loading.
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const ktx2 = new KTX2Loader();
ktx2.setTranscoderPath('/decoders/basis/');
ktx2.detectSupport(renderer);
loader.setKTX2Loader(ktx2);Which decoders does your file actually need?
Configure only the extensions the asset uses. Extra decoders add files to host and maintain for no benefit.
| Asset contains | What it changes | Loader wiring |
|---|---|---|
| Draco geometry | Mesh data size | DRACOLoader via setDRACOLoader; self-hosted decoder files |
| KTX2/Basis textures | Texture encoding and GPU footprint | Configured KTX2Loader; call detectSupport(renderer) before loading |
Meshopt geometry (EXT_meshopt_compression) |
Mesh data size, as an alternative to Draco | setMeshoptDecoder |
| Resized textures, no special extension | Pixel dimensions | None |
Draco and KTX2 touch different parts of the file and can be combined when the GLB uses both. Meshopt is a separate geometry option, not an add-on to Draco.
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- Which data the approach changes: geometry, texture dimensions or texture encoding.
- Transfer size versus decoded GPU memory.
- Visual quality at the configurator’s maximum zoom.
- Runtime decoder requirements and their cost.
- Behavior on the weakest device you support.
Compression trades file size for decode work and possible artifacts, so treat the case study’s numbers as an outcome, not a preset.
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Keeping detail when the color changes
Ahmed found that multiplying a tint over the base-color map dulled the fabric weave and baked shadows. His fix separates luminance from chroma. It reapplies the chosen color while keeping each texel’s brightness, and it blends near-neutral texels back toward their original values. That keeps white midsoles and metal eyelets neutral. This is one configurator’s solution, not a universal shader recipe, so check each material and colorway by eye.
Optional: optimizing in the browser
If you’d rather not use the command line, threejsassets documents a Studio tool that prunes, deduplicates, welds, quantizes, optionally applies Draco, shows before/after reports and exports a GLB. Its documentation says the GLB is processed in the browser without uploading the model to a server. That’s a vendor claim we haven’t independently tested. The free glTF-Transform route above does the same kind of work.
Quick Recap
Verification checklist
- Re-run the inspection on the optimized file and confirm the dominant component actually shrank.
- Compare original and compressed models at maximum zoom, in every colorway.
- Confirm each loader you attached matches an extension the file uses.
- Serve decoder files from your own stable path and cache them.
- Test frame rate and memory on a mid-range or older phone, as Ahmed did with his 60 fps result, not just a desktop.
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