glTF is the format, and .glb is the file
One format carries hierarchy, materials, animation and skinning, and maps almost one-to-one onto what the runtime needs.
glTF is often described as the JPEG of 3D, which undersells it: it is a transmission format whose structures, buffers, accessors, PBR material parameters, animation samplers, correspond directly to what a WebGL runtime uploads. There is no conversion step at load, which is exactly why it beats formats designed for authoring tools.
A .glb is the same thing as a single binary file with the JSON and buffers packed together, which is what you should ship. Everything else is a debugging convenience. When a model is inexplicably heavy, the culprit is nearly always textures rather than geometry, and the second most common culprit is animation data exported at every frame instead of at keyframes.
You should now be able to
- Explain why glTF loads faster than OBJ or FBX
- Inspect a glTF and find what is inflating it
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