Free, open-source, 100% offline reference board for VFX and 3D artists.
Verified against Kanvaz v9.7.0.
What Kanvaz can open and render a real, honest preview for — not just a generic file icon — and register itself with your OS to open directly (“Open with Kanvaz”).
| Category | Formats |
|---|---|
| Image | JPG, JPEG, PNG, BMP, WEBP |
| Animated GIF | GIF |
| Video | MP4, WEBM, MOV, MKV, AVI — inline scrubbable player |
| Audio | MP3, WAV, OGG, M4A — with a waveform preview |
| 3D Model | GLB, GLTF, OBJ, FBX, STL, PLY, VOX, USD/USDA/USDC/USDZ |
| Blender File | .blend — Kanvaz uses a local Blender install to export a real thumbnail, if one is detected (see blender-detect.js) |
| PDF Document | PDF — page-by-page preview |
| Adobe File | PSD, PSB, AI, XD, INDD, INDT |
| HDR/EXR Image | Radiance .hdr/.pic, OpenEXR .exr — tone-mapped preview (not color-managed); some EXR compression methods aren’t decoded yet |
| Krita File | .kra — reads the whole-canvas PNG Krita itself saves inside the file, not a per-layer thumbnail |
3D cards can render in several shading modes (Shaded, Normals, Matcap, Wireframe, Albedo, Alpha), each preserving the model’s real color, opacity, and sidedness — switching modes never touches the original material.
Rendering for 3D/PDF/Adobe previews has a Low/Medium/High setting (see Settings) — pixel ratio, DPI, and max texture size all climb together from Low to High. A card can also override the global setting individually.
Formats without a real, trustworthy path to a preview stay as a
generic labeled file-reference card instead of guessing:
ZBrush .ztl, Houdini .hip/.hipnc, Cinema 4D .c4d, Maya
.ma/.mb, Clip Studio .clip, Procreate .procreate. None of
these have a headless/command-line export path the way .blend does
through a local Blender install, so Kanvaz doesn’t claim to open them
at the OS level — a labeled file card is still fully usable (name,
tags, connections, notes all work), it just won’t show a thumbnail.