Introducing full USDZ support

We've just launched full support for USDZ and all its variants like USD, USDA, and USDB. That means you can now convert USDZ to any of our output formats like GLB, FBX, OBJ, and more.

If you're anywhere near the 3D industry today, you've most likely come across a USDZ 3D model, or maybe needed one. USDZ is one of the youngest formats, introduced in 2018 at Apple's Worldwide Developers Conference.

Where did USDZ come from?

But what many might not know is that the USD 3d format goes further back. When you see Woody staring at the antique store in Toy Story 4, everything on the screen has touched USDZ: characters, locations, everything. USD has been Pixar's internal format for years and was made open source in 2016.

Around that time, Apple was in full swing working on prototypes of their Vision headset and started to really like the USD format's capabilities of combining many 3D disciplines into one, be it geometry, images, or even audio. And, with USDZ, everything can be packed together in a straightforward file, ready to ship to the device that is presenting it, e.g. a phone or a mixed-reality headset.

Apple decided to adopt USDZ for their 3D frameworks, which led to USDZ becoming an important industry standard, impossible to avoid if you're doing anything in 3D for the Apple platforms, including AR previews on e-commerce sites or in apps.

What is USDZ?

USDZ is just a variant of the USD format family. The Z stands for "zip", but it's actually not compressed, it's just a way to pack everything in one file, which is handy.

The other variants are

• USD. This is a bit misleading because it can be either a USDA or USDC, so let's take a look at what those are:
• USDA. Here, the scene description itself is in plain text, A for ASCII. It's great if you want to tinker with the file itself, but not so great if you want to load it on a small device, as it will have to first read and understand the text, and then deal with the 3D.
• USDC is the binary version, and it's really fast. Great for snappy previews.

Why USDZ?

There are a couple of reasons you might want to go for a USDZ file. If you're working on the Apple ecosystem, you get built-in native support on macOS, tvOS, iPadOS, and iOS. Safari reads the files out of the box, as well as AR QuickView.

For professionals, USDZ promises that this format is all you need throughout the entire workflow. There's just that one file, whether you're a 3D artist doing modeling, a texture artist whose output is JPG or PNG, or you're working with audio. It all goes into the USDZ archive. And when you're done and ready to ship, you ship the USDZ file. Simple, right? No intermediate formats to deal with here.

The Convert 3D USDZ converter

The USD converters are our latest first-class citizens in the population of 3D formats in our converter:

• Import any USD variant and export to any of our output formats, including GLB, GLTF, and more.
• Convert any of our 50+ import formats to USDZ, even the most exotic ones.

Free, safe, and private

And of course, like the rest of Convert3D, it's free and 100% private - your files are never uploaded to the cloud for conversion, it all happens on your computer, whether you're on Windows, macOS, or Linux, using any modern browser.

How to convert online

Convert a 3D model to USDZ by finding your format on /convert, then drag in your model. Or, just drag your model on the universal converter on our main page.

Convert a USDZ model to OBJ, FBX, STL, GLB, GLTF, DAE, 3DS, or PLY - and more coming soon!