Code Yarns ‍👨‍💻
Tech BlogPersonal Blog

Convert between ASCII and Binary PLY File Formats

📅 2011-Aug-20 ⬩ ✍️ Ashwin Nanjappa ⬩ 🏷️ meshlab, ply ⬩ 📚 Archive

 

Files in the PLY file format come in two variants: ASCII and binary. Some programs have problems dealing with a binary PLY file and can only deal with a ASCII PLY file. There are many programs available to convert between ASCII and binary PLY files. I had some problems with the converted files when I used programs like ply2ascii to do this conversion.

Instead, I discovered that MeshLab is not only a cool mesh viewer program, but can also convert between many mesh formats. It supports conversion between PLY too:

  1. Open the original (say binary) PLY file by using FileImport Mesh.

  2. Export this file to the (say ASCII) PLY file format by using FileExport Mesh As. Choose PLY file format in the Save dialog.

  3. MeshLab shows a dialog specific to PLY. Here depending on which (ASCII or binary) PLY format you want, choose the Binary encoding radio button. Your PLY file is converted! 😊

Tried with: MeshLab 1.3.0


© 2023 Ashwin Nanjappa • All writing under CC BY-SA license • 🐘 Mastodon📧 Email