About the Ply file format
- Name
- Standford Polygon Library
- Extension
- .ply
- Category
- 3D
- Developer
- Stanford University
- Description
- It is a 3D model file format developed by Stanford Computer Graphics Laboratory. PLY is mainly used to describe objects in a collection of polygons.
- MIME Type
- application/octet-stream
- Wikipedia
- .ply on Wikipedia
Created in the 1990s, the PLY format originated from a 3D laser triangular scanner. This is the reason behind it being referred to as the Stanford Triangle format (.ply). It’s main objective was to provide a simple yet easy to use file format for a broad range of models. The file is used to describe a single object. It comes with two subsets; the ASCII and binary representations. Any application processing PLY files is expected to recognize it’s core elements - face and vertex. A face shows you the number of vertices in a face (3 for triangle) and it specifies the vertices. The vertex displays a point defined by coordinates in 3D. For operability, PLY files have elements and properties described as óften used’ that offer basic color and surface material characteristics like reflection. The file can also store a point cloud which is made up of a group of vertex elements with no face specifications. It can be opened using Polygon Model Software developed by Stanford,Harvard Graphics Spotlight Presentation Screen, Blaze Media Pro, Blender, AIRO, and many more.