Convert PLY to OBJ in your browser
ASCII PLY — the format photogrammetry and laser-scan pipelines export — is plain text, so it is parsed and rewritten as Wavefront OBJ right here on your machine.
Short answer: Drop your PLY file below and it converts to OBJ inside your browser — free, no sign-up, and the file is never uploaded.
| Converts in this browser | Yes |
|---|---|
| Cost | Free |
| From | PLY — Polygon File Format |
| To | OBJ — Wavefront OBJ |
| Steps | 4 |
PLY → OBJ converter
Runs entirely in this browser tab. Your file is never uploaded and nothing is stored.
Drop your PLY file here
or — no sign-up required
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How it works
- 1Export your scan as ASCII PLY (binary PLY has to be re-saved as ASCII first; MeshLab and CloudCompare both do this in one step).
- 2Drop the .ply file above.
- 3Download the .obj and import it into your renderer, mesh tool or CAD package.
- 4Set the units on import — PLY declares none.
What to watch out for
- Vertex colours, normals and scan confidence values are not carried over: standard OBJ geometry has nowhere to put them.
- Point clouds with no face element cannot become an OBJ mesh — mesh them in CloudCompare or MeshLab first.
- Binary PLY is refused rather than guessed at, so you never get a silently mangled mesh.
The Stanford scan format. Plain text in its ASCII flavour, which is why photogrammetry and laser-scan meshes can be rewritten here.
A plain-text mesh format listing vertices and faces — openly documented, which is why it can be read and rewritten in the browser.
Questions
Why does it say my PLY is binary?
The header line reads 'format binary_little_endian'. Open it in MeshLab and re-save with the ASCII option ticked.
Can I keep the scan colours?
Not in OBJ geometry. Keep the PLY alongside it, or bake the colours to a texture in your mesh tool.
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