Archived! Use the V-Sekai module or GDNative plugin. The GDNative plugin will allow you to use the normal release templates.

If your project is on 3.4, then you can use my release templates here. Runtime GLTF loading is supported in Godot 3.4 but disabled in release builds for whatever reason. To build the template for yourself, run something like: scons platform=windows target=release tools=no module_gltf=yes -j8 . I provide precompiled release templates here.

In Godot 3.4, this API is exposed:

var gltf_loader := PackedSceneGLTF.new()
var model = gltf_loader.import_gltf_scene("some_file_path.glb")

Godot Dynamic GLTF Loader

A module for Godot that allows for loading gltf/glb data at runtime for Godot 3.2.4+

Quickstart

Clone the Godot repository and switch to the 3.2 branch. Place the dynamic_gltf_loader folder into the modules folder in Godot's directory. Compile the engine for your platform (e.g. Windows: scons platform=windows target=release_debug bits=64). Run the resulting binary that was generated in the bin folder. The DynamicGLTFLoader class will be exposed in GDScript.

var loader = DynamicGLTFLoader.new()
# Params are "path", "flags", "bake_fps"
# Not sure what flags or bake_fps are really supposed to be right now
var model = loader.import_scene("C:\\my\\path.glb", 1, 1)

The result should be close to what the editor generates.

In order to export your game, you will need to compile new export templates. Please refer to the Godot documentation on how to do that for your platform.

Motivation

openseeface-gd needed the ability to load models at runtime, so I ripped out the gltf loader from Godot and made it into a proper module so it wouldn't be stripped out during export.

Technical Implementation

I copy pasted the relevant resource importers, changed the names to prevent name conflicts, and stripped out extraneous references to editor-specific code lmao

dynamic_gltf_loader.cpp exposes the single method needed to import a gltf or glb file.

Godot 4.0 has a dynamic gltf loader written for it so this was a hack to avoid wasting time on porting it back to 3.2.4.