Reality Converter

Reality Converter
Information
Type	Conversion tool
Industry	Augmented reality
Developer	Apple Inc.
Operating System	macOS
License	Proprietary, free (Apple ID sign-in required)
Supported Devices	Mac
Release Date	January 13, 2020 (first beta)
Website	https://developer.apple.com/news/?id=01132020a

Reality Converter is a macOS application made by Apple Inc. for converting 3D models into the USDZ format used by Apple's augmented reality (AR) tools, and for viewing and adjusting the converted files. Apple announced it to developers on January 13, 2020, saying the app "makes it easy to convert, view, and customize USDZ 3D objects on Mac." Users drag in files in formats such as .obj, .gltf and .usd, swap in their own textures, edit file metadata, and preview the result under built-in image-based lighting (IBL) environments.

Apple presented the app as a way to prepare models for Reality Composer, which at the time only accepted USDZ files, and as the next generation of its Python-based USDZ Tools. Reality Converter never left beta. Apple offered builds up to "beta 6" on its AR creation tools page, then dropped the app from that page in mid-2025. The page's address now leads to Apple's Reality Composer Pro page instead.

Reviewed 13 October 2026. Release date, formats, features, beta history and 2025 removal checked against Apple's developer news post, WWDC20 sessions 10601/10613, WWDC22 session 10141, the AR Quick Look lighting documentation, archived and live Apple tools pages, two Apple Developer Forums threads, MacRumors, 9to5Mac, CG Channel, Monstarlab and the CEUR paper. About review dates.

History

First beta (2020)

Apple released the first beta on January 13, 2020, through a post on its developer news site that linked to a download on the AR tools page. MacRumors and 9to5Mac reported the release the same day. 9to5Mac described it as a tool meant to be used with Reality Composer, which Apple had introduced alongside the RealityKit framework at its Worldwide Developers Conference the previous June. CG Channel reported that the app was free, needed macOS 10.15, and could be downloaded with a free Apple ID. It took OBJ, glTF and USD files as input and wrote USDZ, the format Apple and Pixar had developed for AR content.

At WWDC 2020 Apple presented Reality Converter in two sessions. In "What's new in USD", Apple said it had "expanded the artist workflow with the introduction of Reality Converter which makes it easy to convert content from DCCs to usdz for import and use in Reality Composer", and that Reality Composer had gained USDZ export at the same time. In "The artist's AR toolkit", Apple designer Philip Simmons called the app "a next generation" of the Python-based USDZ Tools released the year before. He listed FBX, OBJ, USD and glTF as accepted geometry formats and PNG and JPEG as texture formats.

Later betas (2021-2023)

Apple kept updating the app as a beta. Archived copies of its AR creation tools page show a download called "Reality_Converter_Beta_4" in March 2022, "beta 5" in June 2022, and "beta 6" (a 70.7 MB download) by May 2023.

In early 2022, users on Apple's developer forums reported that FBX conversion failed on macOS 12.3 betas. An Apple Graphics and Games engineer replied in February 2022 that "Reality Converter has known issues on 12.3". In March 2022 the same engineer wrote that Apple had "released an update to Reality Converter that should address this issue."

At WWDC 2022, the session "Explore USD tools and rendering" described Reality Converter as an editor built on the USDZ Tools that "provides the same capabilities as usdzconvert, but in an editor window". The session announced several additions. Textures could now be compressed as JPEG on export, which Apple said cut the file size of a scanned chess piece by about 80 percent with little visible difference. The app could also repair common problems in USD assets automatically, and it now ran natively on Apple silicon Macs as a universal binary.

Removal (2025)

By June 2024 Apple's tools page had been retitled "Creation tools for spatial apps" and also covered Reality Composer Pro, the asset tool for visionOS apps. It still described Reality Converter as a beta and listed the beta 6 download as late as May 16, 2025. A copy archived on June 23, 2025 lists only Reality Composer Pro and Reality Composer. In a June 2025 forum thread where a developer asked whether the app was deprecated, an Apple DTS engineer recommended "Preview on macOS and the usdcat command-line tool" for model conversion, while still linking the beta 6 file. As of October 2026, the former tools page address redirects to Apple's Reality Composer Pro page, which offers the Reality Composer Pro 3 beta and does not mention Reality Converter.

Date	Event	Source
January 13, 2020	First beta announced on Apple Developer News
June 2020	Presented at WWDC 2020; FBX listed as an accepted input
March 2022	Beta 4 offered; Apple says an update fixes macOS 12.3 FBX problems
June 2022	Beta 5 offered; WWDC 2022 adds JPEG texture compression, automatic asset fixes and Apple silicon support
May 2023	Beta 6 offered (70.7 MB)
June 2025	No longer listed on Apple's creation tools page

Features

Import and conversion

The app opens with an empty scene, and files are dragged into its viewport. Each imported model appears in a Models list, and animated assets can be played back in a loop. Dropping a whole folder links the model's textures automatically. A model without an assigned material gets a fallback material on import. Models can be exported one at a time or all at once with an "export all" command. Apple's 2020 description named .obj, .gltf and .usd as input formats, and the WWDC 2020 session added FBX. A Monstarlab engineering tutorial from April 2020 noted that FBX conversion required Autodesk's FBX Python SDK to be installed first.

Materials, properties and lighting

A Materials tab lets users hook textures such as base color, normal and ambient occlusion maps into a model's material slots. A Properties tab holds copyright metadata and the model's base units, so that an asset built in centimeters exports at the correct scale. Apple warned that a wrong unit setting makes a model 100 times too large or too small when it is brought into Reality Composer. The Environments tab offers preset IBL environments with exposure controls, and a one-meter grid shows the size of the model.

When AR Quick Look in iOS 16 introduced a new lighting environment, Apple added a way to choose between it and the older "classic" lighting through a preferredIblVersion metadata value. According to Apple's documentation, Reality Converter previews imported assets with the new lighting (value 2) by default, and its Use Classic Lighting option writes the value 1 into the file. The command-line usdzconvert tool can set the same value. Files without the value are lit according to their creation timestamp: those created on or after July 1, 2022 get the new lighting. See AR Quick Look for the viewer.

Use in research and education

In a paper at the MoMLeT+DS 2020 workshop, Dmytro Ostrovka and Vasyl Teslyuk of Lviv Polytechnic National University compared Reality Converter with Blender and Autodesk's FbxConverterUI for turning OBJ and FBX models into formats that iOS can display. In their tests Reality Converter produced the most compact files and kept both animation and textures, but it did not use the color information in OBJ .mtl files. The authors concluded that it was "the most optimal program" of the three, although one of their three FBX test models failed to convert in Reality Converter and converted only in Blender. Kodeco's book Apple Augmented Reality by Tutorials gives the app its own chapter, "Reality Converter & PBR Materials".

See also

• USDZ
• OpenUSD
• Reality Composer
• Reality Composer Pro
• AR Quick Look
• ARKit