Convert USDA to RAW
Free, in your browser, with nothing uploaded. Drop your .usda file in and take the .raw away.
Drop your USDA file here
.usda in, .raw out
Choose filesNothing is uploaded No account, no email No file size limit
How to convert USDA to RAW
- 01
Add your .usda file
Drag your Universal Scene Description (ASCII) 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 .raw file
Press convert. The Raw Triangles 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 a USDA file becomes an RAW file.
| Data | USDA | RAW | Survives |
|---|---|---|---|
| Geometry | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Materials & colour | Yes | No | Dropped |
| Texture maps | Yes | No | Dropped |
| Animation & rigs | Yes | No | Dropped |
| Scene hierarchy | Yes | No | Dropped |
Expect to lose
- RAW stores no animation, so rigs and takes in your USDA file are not carried over.
- RAW has no concept of texture coordinates or image maps; the model comes out untextured.
- The scene hierarchy is flattened: separate objects in the USDA file are merged into one mesh.
None of this is a defect in the conversion; it is what RAW 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.
About Universal Scene Description (ASCII)
A .usda file is Universal Scene Description in its human-readable text encoding. It is the flavour to reach for when you want to see what a scene actually declares, diff two revisions in source control, or hand-edit an override, at the cost of being far larger and slower to load than the binary crate format.
Commonly seen in: Houdini, Maya, usdview, Omniverse, Blender. More on the USDA format page.
About Raw Triangles
The RAW format is a text file in which every line is a complete triangle: nine floating-point numbers, optionally preceded by a group name. There is no index, no vertex sharing, no header and no specification beyond that. It exists because it takes about ten lines of code to write from any language, which makes it the format of choice for quick scripted exports and for teaching mesh handling.
Commonly seen in: scripted exports, POV-Ray tooling, teaching material. More on the RAW 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 USDA 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 RAW 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.
USDA to RAW: common questions
Is my USDA 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 a USDA 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 RAW file look untextured?
RAW 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 USDA:
Other ways to get to RAW:
Or do something else with it: