Convert XGL to VRML
Free, in your browser, with nothing uploaded. Drop your .xgl file in and take the .wrl away.
Drop your XGL file here
.xgl in, .wrl out
Choose filesNothing is uploaded No account, no email No file size limit
How to convert XGL to VRML
- 01
Add your .xgl file
Drag your XGL / ZGL 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 .wrl file
Press convert. The Virtual Reality Modeling Language 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 XGL file becomes a VRML file.
| Data | XGL | VRML | Survives |
|---|---|---|---|
| Geometry | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Materials & colour | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Texture maps | No | Yes | n/a |
| Animation & rigs | No | No | n/a |
| Scene hierarchy | Yes | Yes | Yes |
This is a comparatively lossless pairing: 3 of the five categories above are supported by both formats, so most of what is in your XGL file has somewhere to go in the VRML file.
What our VRML writer puts in the file
Geometry and per-mesh material colour, which is what colour 3D printing needs. Texture images are not written: VRML references them by filename and a converted file that needs its images shipped alongside arrives broken.
About XGL / ZGL
XGL encodes a scene as XML mirroring the OpenGL calls needed to draw it, with .zgl as the gzip-compressed variant. CAD packages emitted it for lightweight viewing and design review, a way to hand somebody a model to look at without handing over the parametric CAD data behind it.
Commonly seen in: CAD viewers, design review tools, legacy engineering exports. More on the XGL format page.
About Virtual Reality Modeling Language
VRML was the 1990s attempt to put 3D scenes on the web, and .wrl files are its legacy. The plug-ins are long dead but the format survives in one very practical niche: full-colour 3D printing. Shapeways, i.materialise and colour powder printers have historically taken VRML because it carries per-vertex colour and texture references that STL cannot.
Commonly seen in: colour 3D printing bureaus, Shapeways, legacy CAD exporters, academic archives. More on the VRML 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 XGL 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 VRML 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.
XGL to VRML: common questions
Is my XGL 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 XGL 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 VRML file look untextured?
Because this writer leaves them out. VRML references an image by filename rather than storing it inside the file, so the images would have to travel separately and land where the file expects them, which is how a converted model arrives broken. Convert to GLB, FBX or USDZ instead if the textures need to stay with the model.
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 XGL:
Other ways to get to VRML:
Or do something else with it: