OBJ to PLY

OBJ (Wavefront) is a common 3D exchange format, while PLY (Polygon File Format / Stanford) is widely used by research tools, point-cloud software and meshing programs such as MeshLab or CloudCompare. This tool reads your OBJ and writes a clean ASCII PLY with a vertex list and a face list.

The output is ASCII PLY: a readable header (element vertex, element face) followed by the vertex coordinates and the faces as index lists. Faces keep their original number of corners. The coordinates are carried over unchanged, so the geometry is preserved exactly.

Everything runs entirely locally in the browser - your possibly confidential model never leaves your device. Honestly framed: pure geometry is transferred. OBJ material (MTL), textures and groups have no counterpart in a plain PLY and are not carried over. An invalid or empty OBJ file is rejected with a clear message.

Unlike STL, PLY can store per-vertex colours and further properties. Since an OBJ file itself carries no such vertex colours, this conversion writes pure geometry: the vertices and the faces that reference them. What was never in the OBJ cannot be gained by the PLY either - it is an honest 1:1 transfer of the shape.

Specifications

In 3 steps

1. Drop your OBJ file.
2. The conversion runs automatically.
3. Download the ASCII PLY.

Limitations: Converts OBJ to readable ASCII PLY (Stanford format) with a vertex list and a face list. Pure geometry is transferred - OBJ material (MTL), textures and groups have no counterpart in plain PLY. Existing vn normal lines in the OBJ file are ignored on read and not carried into the PLY; the output holds only x/y/z vertices with no normal property. An invalid or empty OBJ file is rejected with a clear error.

FAQ

Related tools

STL to PLY · PLY to OBJ · OBJ to STL · STL binary to ASCII · STL ASCII to binary · PLY to STL