Convert MDL to PCD
Free, in your browser, with nothing uploaded. Drop your .mdl file in and take the .pcd away.
Drop your MDL file here
.mdl in, .pcd out
Choose filesNothing is uploaded No account, no email No file size limit
How to convert MDL to PCD
- 01
Add your .mdl file
Drag your Quake / 3D GameStudio 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 .pcd file
Press convert. The Point Cloud Data 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 MDL file becomes a PCD file.
| Data | MDL | PCD | 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
- PCD stores no animation, so rigs and takes in your MDL file are not carried over.
- PCD 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 PCD 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 PCD writer puts in the file
The vertices of the model as an ASCII point cloud with packed RGB. Triangles are not written, because PCD has nowhere to put them.
About Quake / 3D GameStudio Model
MDL is Quake’s original model format, storing vertex-animated frames against a single skin texture on a compressed integer grid. The same extension was later reused by 3D GameStudio for its own unrelated format, and both are recognised here.
Commonly seen in: Quake, 3D GameStudio, Half-Life tooling, retro engines. More on the MDL format page.
About Point Cloud Data
PCD is the native format of the Point Cloud Library and the usual output of lidar scanners, depth cameras and ROS robotics stacks. It stores points with optional colour, intensity and normal fields in ASCII, binary or compressed binary layouts. There are no faces in a PCD file; converting it gives you a point cloud in the target format, not a surface.
Commonly seen in: PCL, ROS, CloudCompare, Open3D, lidar and depth-sensor pipelines. More on the PCD 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 MDL 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 PCD 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.
MDL to PCD: common questions
Is my MDL 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 MDL 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 PCD file look untextured?
PCD 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 MDL:
Other ways to get to PCD:
Or do something else with it: