Does the conversion create a mesh from a point cloud?

No. Points are written as points. Converting a scan into a surface requires a reconstruction algorithm, which is a different tool and a different problem.

What colour information survives?

Per-vertex RGB from the PLY. PLY has no image textures, so nothing else colour-related is involved.

glTF splits geometry and scene description across a .gltf document and a .bin buffer. GLBKit zips them so the relative path stays valid.

PLY to glTF Converter

Name: PLY to glTF Converter
Author: GLBKit

Convert a PLY mesh or point cloud to a glTF JSON asset with a .bin buffer, keeping vertex colour. Runs in your browser.

Drag & drop your PLY file here

or click to browse

Supported Formats

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

Format Information

Source 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

Target Format

glTF.gltf

glTF (JSON)

glTF 2.0 in its JSON form. The .gltf file is a readable text document that describes the scene and references an external .bin buffer plus separate image files, so a finished asset is a folder rather than a single file.

What it carries: The same scene data as GLB — PBR materials, image textures, node hierarchy, skinning, morph targets, keyframe animation, cameras and lights — but expressed as external file references instead of an embedded payload.

Open a glTF file in the viewer

About this conversion

A PLY dataset written out as a glTF 2.0 JSON asset. Geometry, normals and any vertex colour carry across; textures and materials have no counterpart in PLY and are not involved.

Why convert PLY to glTF

Move a PLY scan into a glTF-based pipeline such as glTF Validator or a web renderer.
Store a colour-bearing PLY unpacked so the buffer and geometry can be inspected and versioned.
Prepare PLY data for a tool that reads glTF but not PLY.

What happens during the conversion

Geometry

A mesh PLY keeps its vertices and faces; a point-cloud PLY is written as a point set. Everything ends up in a single node, since PLY has no scene graph.

Materials and textures

No image textures and no material model are involved — PLY has none. What does carry across is per-vertex RGB colour, which is written as a glTF colour attribute.

Common use cases

Running a glTF-based toolchain over scan data.
Storing PLY geometry unpacked for review or versioning.
Feeding a renderer that reads glTF but not PLY.

Limitations of this conversion

Point clouds stay point clouds; no surfaces are generated.
Only visible objects are written, so anything hidden in the source .ply scene is left out of the .gltf.
The download is a ZIP containing the .gltf and its .bin buffer, which must be kept together.

How to convert PLY to glTF

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 .ply

Mesh and point-cloud PLY are both read, in ASCII or binary.

STEP 2

Convert to glTF

Vertices, faces where they exist, normals and vertex colour are written as .gltf plus .bin.

STEP 3

Unpack the ZIP and keep the files together

The .ply's geometry is written into a .gltf JSON document with a separate .bin buffer, linked by relative path.