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PLY
What is a PLY file?
The scanner format. Carries per-point colour, which is why 3D scans arrive as PLY.
What PLY is
PLY is a binary format, meaningful only to a program that knows it. It stores shapes and coordinates rather than pixels, so it stays sharp at any size — a logo scaled to a billboard loses nothing. It is used for scanning and moving data between programs.
The extension is .ply, and the full name is Polygon File Format. Both matter less than what the file can hold, which is what the rest of this page is about.
Where PLY came from
Stanford University published it in 1994.
A format that has been readable for that long is a format worth trusting with something you want back in ten years.
The specification is public
Anyone can implement it without asking permission or paying a licence, which is why it turns up in so many programs and why files written twenty years ago still open.
Nothing is thrown away
PLY stores its content exactly. Saving it again changes nothing, so it can be opened, edited and re-saved as often as you like without accumulating damage — which is what makes it a working format rather than a delivery one.
What opens PLY
MeshLab, Blender and CloudCompare read it, and so do most programs of the same kind.
If a file will not open, the format is rarely the problem — it is more often that the program predates it. Converting to something older is the reliable way past that, and it is what the rest of this site is for.
Opening it in a browser
No browser reads it.
That is the single most common reason to convert it: not that the format is bad, but that the place you want to show the file cannot read it.
It is a working format
PLY is meant to be opened and changed. Keep the file in this format for as long as the work is going on, and export from it whenever a finished copy is needed.
The facts, in one place
| Extension | .ply |
|---|---|
| Media type | model/ply |
| Published by | Stanford University |
| First published | 1994 |