Extract text from Compressed Poser hand poses (HDZ)
To convert HDZ hand poses to another format, you need Poser or other 3D software.
To convert other file formats to the "Compressed 3D Pose File" file type, you need software like Poser or a similar tool.
The .HDZ file is a Compressed Poser Hand Pose File used primarily in 3D character animation. It stores specific joint rotation coordinates for fingers and hands applied to rigged figures in Poser, a 3D computer graphics program originally created by Fractal Design and currently maintained by Bondware.
The main disadvantage of the .HDZ format is that it is highly specialized and locked into the Poser ecosystem. Because it contains only bone rotation data rather than 3D geometry (meshes), it cannot be natively opened by web browsers, standard operating system viewers, or basic image tools. Furthermore, the "Z" indicates the file is compressed. This means the internal text data is scrambled into a binary format to save disk space and cannot be manually edited in a basic text editor like a standard HD2 file. Using these files generally requires an active, paid Poser license.
Users typically want to convert .HDZ files to HD2 (the uncompressed plain-text equivalent). Doing so allows 3D artists to manually edit the coordinate parameters, tweak bone angles, or fix corrupted file data. You cannot convert an .HDZ directly to a 3D mesh format like OBJ or STL because it completely lacks vertex and polygon data.
This file format is difficult to open or convert because standard online tools do not support Poser-specific rigging logic. Often only the original Poser software can properly read or export the data to a new figure. Since Poser "Z" files are typically standard gzip archives, our analysis can often detect the supported underlying embedded format and extract the raw HD2 text structure for you.
Convert.Guru analyzes your HDZ file, detects the exact format, and lets you read the text inside.
Users also converted HDR files.
If you want to convert HDZ file to HDR, OBJ, FBX, DAE, 3DS, MAX, BLEND, MA, MB, C4D, STL or PLY, you can use Poser or similar software from the "3D Character Hand Articulation" category. In the File menu, look for Save As… or Export….
To convert DWG, DAE, X3D, IGES, WRL, JT, SKP, 3DS, 3DM, OBJ, STEP or FBX files to HDZ, try Poser or another comparable tool in the "3D Character Hand Articulation" category.
The history of Convert.Guru began over 25 years ago in California with Tom Simondi’s file-format database. A former contributor to Space Shuttle development and a software pioneer of the 1980s, Simondi established a trusted resource for file type analysis that was even referenced by Microsoft Windows XP. Today, we use modern technology to process and convert thousands of file formats while continually improving our HDZ converter.