Convert MD3 to XYZ
Free, in your browser, with nothing uploaded. Drop your .md3 file in and take the .xyz away.
Drop your MD3 file here
.md3 in, .xyz out
Choose filesNothing is uploaded No account, no email No file size limit
How to convert MD3 to XYZ
- 01
Add your .md3 file
Drag your Quake III Model file onto the drop zone, or click it to browse. Nothing is uploaded: it is read where it already sits.
- 02
Check the preview
The model is parsed on your machine and drawn in the viewport, so a wrong axis or a missing texture shows up before you commit rather than downstream.
- 03
Save the .xyz file
Press convert. The XYZ Point Cloud file is written in the tab and lands in your downloads folder. No link, no expiry, no account.
What carries over, and what does not
A format conversion is a translation, and translations lose things. Here is what actually happens when an MD3 file becomes an XYZ file.
| Data | MD3 | XYZ | Survives |
|---|---|---|---|
| Geometry | Yes | No | Dropped |
| Materials & colour | Yes | No | Dropped |
| Texture maps | Yes | No | Dropped |
| Animation & rigs | Yes | No | Dropped |
| Scene hierarchy | No | No | n/a |
Expect to lose
- XYZ stores no animation, so rigs and takes in your MD3 file are not carried over.
- XYZ has no concept of texture coordinates or image maps; the model comes out untextured.
None of this is a defect in the conversion; it is what XYZ is specified to hold. If you need the missing data, convert to GLB instead, which carries geometry, PBR materials, textures and animation in a single file.
What our XYZ writer puts in the file
The vertices of the model, one point a line, with colour. Triangles are not written.
About Quake III Model
MD3 refined Quake II’s approach: still vertex-animated rather than skinned, but a model is split into separate pieces (head, torso, legs) joined at named tags so the engine can drive them independently. Every Quake III character, weapon and map model uses it, and the format outlived the game through Return to Castle Wolfenstein and a long tail of mods.
Commonly seen in: Quake III Arena, Return to Castle Wolfenstein, OpenArena, idTech 3 mods. More on the MD3 format page.
About XYZ Point Cloud
An XYZ file is a text file with one point per line: three coordinates, optionally followed by three colour values. That is the entire specification. Its simplicity makes it the universal fallback for surveying data, scientific point sets and anything exported from a spreadsheet or a script.
Commonly seen in: CloudCompare, MeshLab, surveying tools, scientific data exports. More on the XYZ format page.
How the conversion works
When you drop a file in, the bytes are handed to a parser compiled to run in your browser. The MD3 data is decoded into an in-memory scene graph of meshes, materials and transforms, which is what the preview is drawing. Pressing convert walks that scene graph back out through a XYZ writer and hands you the resulting bytes as a download.
The whole round trip is local. The page itself is static: it is delivered once and then does its work offline. That is why the privacy claim is checkable rather than a promise.
MD3 to XYZ: common questions
Is my MD3 file uploaded anywhere?
No. The file is read by code running inside this browser tab and never crosses the network. You can prove it by disconnecting from the internet before you convert, the page keeps working, or by watching the Network tab in your browser's developer tools while you drop a file in.
How large an MD3 file can I convert?
There is no server-side limit because there is no server. The practical ceiling is your own machine's memory: a browser tab can usually handle models up to a few hundred megabytes. Very dense scans or scenes with millions of triangles will take a few seconds and a lot of RAM.
Why does my converted XYZ file look untextured?
XYZ stores geometry only; it has no way to record materials or texture maps. If you need the surfacing to survive, convert to GLB or glTF instead.
Does it cost anything?
No. There is no fee, no account, no watermark and no per-file limit. Since the conversion runs on your hardware rather than ours, serving this page costs about as much as serving a blog post.
Does it work on a Mac, on Windows or on a phone?
All of them. There is nothing to install: any browser with WebGL 2 will do, which covers current Chrome, Edge, Firefox and Safari on desktop, and Safari and Chrome on mobile. A phone has less memory than a laptop, so a very heavy scene may be the one thing it cannot finish.
Related conversions
Other things to do with the same file.
From MD3:
Other ways to get to XYZ:
Or do something else with it: