Can PLY store the OBJ's texture?

Not as an image texture. PLY carries per-vertex data, so normals, UVs and vertex colours transfer; the diffuse map itself does not.

Why is the output ASCII when PLY supports binary?

ASCII PLY is readable and easy to post-process, which is the more useful default for analysis work. It is larger than binary PLY.

Does this conversion triangulate the mesh?

Yes. Any polygon face with more than three corners is split into triangles, since the writer emits triangle faces.

OBJ to PLY Converter

Convert a Wavefront OBJ to ASCII PLY with positions, normals and vertex colours, for Open3D, PCL and trimesh. Runs in your browser.

Drag & drop your OBJ file here

or click to browse

Supported Formats

.glb.gltf.obj.fbx.stl.ply.3mf.off.zip

Format Information

Source Format

OBJ.obj

OBJ (Wavefront)

The Wavefront OBJ format is a plain-text mesh description that has been the default interchange format for computer graphics since the 1990s. Geometry lives in the .obj file; colour and texture references live in a companion .mtl file.

What it carries: Vertex positions, normals, texture coordinates and polygon faces, plus what MTL can express: a diffuse colour, opacity, shininess and a single diffuse texture map. There are no PBR metal/roughness values, no normal maps, no vertex colours and no animation.

Open a OBJ file in the viewer

Target Format

PLY.ply

PLY (Polygon File Format)

PLY is a flexible text or binary format that can describe either a polygon mesh or a bare point cloud, depending on whether the file declares a face element alongside its vertices. That dual nature is why PLY appears in both modelling and LiDAR workflows.

What it carries: Per-vertex position, optional normals, optional RGB colours, optional UVs on mesh PLY files, and face indices. Image textures, material graphs and animation are not part of the format.

Open a PLY file in the viewer

About this conversion

PLY is a data format, and this turns an OBJ mesh into one: an ASCII PLY 1.0 file with positions, normals and any vertex colours the scene carries.

Why convert OBJ to PLY

Load the mesh into Open3D, PCL, trimesh or a geometry-processing library.
Hand the model to a scientific or simulation tool that reads PLY natively.
Get a plain-text mesh you can post-process with a script or diff in version control.

What happens during the conversion

Geometry

Positions, UVs and normals are read from the OBJ and written into one PLY vertex list and face list, with faces triangulated. OBJ grouping is flattened and node transforms are baked into the coordinates.

Materials and textures

No image textures are written. What survives is per-vertex data: normals, and RGB vertex colours when the scene has them. The MTL diffuse colour and map are not rasterised onto the mesh.

Common use cases

Measuring or repairing a scanned-style mesh inside an Open3D or PCL pipeline.
Moving a graphics asset into a scientific visualisation pipeline.
Generating a text mesh that a script can parse without a 3D library installed.

Limitations of this conversion

OBJ materials and image textures are dropped, because a PLY stores geometry attributes only. Normals, UVs and vertex colours survive.
The OBJ may be tiny while the ASCII PLY is several times larger, because every coordinate is written as decimal text.
OBJ has no animation, and PLY has none either, so nothing is lost in that respect.

How to convert OBJ to PLY

Three steps in the browser. Nothing is uploaded to a server, so an unwieldy file is limited only by your own device's memory.

STEP 1

Upload your .obj

A bare .obj is enough for a geometry-only PLY.

STEP 2

Convert to PLY

The OBJ's objects are merged and written as one ASCII PLY 1.0 vertex and face list.