The PLY file format is a simple object description that was designed
as a convenient format for researchers who work with polygonal models.
Early versions of this file format were used at Stanford University
and at UNC Chapel Hill.
A PLY file consists of a header
followed by a list of vertices and then a list of polygons. The
header specifies how many vertices and polygons are in the file, and
also states what properties are associated with each vertex, such as
(x,y,z) coordinates, normals and color. The polygon faces are simply
lists of indices into the vertex list, and each face begins with a
count of the number of elements in each list.
Source code for programs that read and write PLY files can be found
in the PLY code archive.
This archive includes programs to transform polygonal
objects, calculate surface normals, flip faces and determine the spatial
bounds of an object. We plan to make additional tools available in the
near future.
