Extract text from 3D animation files (SKELETON)
To convert SKELETON animations to another format, you need Ogre3D or other 3D software.
To convert other file formats to the "3D Animation Rig" file type, you need software like Ogre3D or a similar tool.
The .SKELETON file format is primarily used to store 3D bone hierarchy, rigging structure, and animation data for 3D graphics engines like Ogre3D and CryEngine. Alternatively, it serves as a motion capture and depth-sensing data container for hardware like the Microsoft Kinect, NTU RGB+D Action datasets, or ARRI cinema cameras. In rare cases, such as with Minecraft, it acts as a zlib-compressed NBT structure file.
The main disadvantage of the .SKELETON format is extreme fragmentation. Because it is highly proprietary and specific to the engine or SDK that created it, a Kinect tracking file will completely fail to open in an Ogre3D viewer. These files usually require specialized development environments, SDKs, or game engines to read, making them useless for average users and extremely difficult to share.
To make this data usable in standard 3D suites like Blender or Autodesk Maya, you must convert .SKELETON files into universal formats like FBX, BVH (Biovision Hierarchy), or DAE (Collada). Converting motion capture data to BVH retains the skeletal joint movements, though proprietary engine-specific metadata is often lost.
Because these formats are mostly closed and undocumented, standard online converters often fail to process them. They are designed for raw performance inside a game engine, not for interoperability. Our analysis engine can detect if the file relies on a known underlying format, such as zlib compression, and extract the usable data.
Convert.Guru analyzes your SKELETON file, detects the exact format, and lets you read the text inside.
Users also converted SKEL, MESH, YFT, FBX, JPG, PDF, ALA, CGF and CGA files.
If you want to convert SKELETON file to OBJ, FBX, DAE, 3DS, MAX, BLEND, MA, MB, C4D, STL, PLY or WRL, you can use Ogre3D or similar software from the "3D Rigging and Motion Capture" 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 SKELETON, try Ogre3D or another comparable tool in the "3D Rigging and Motion Capture" 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 SKELETON converter.