Convert OBJ to PLY
Convert a Wavefront OBJ into a PLY for scan and point-cloud tools, keeping its geometry and any vertex colours. Materials, textures and UVs are not stored.
Free, no account, up to 50 MB per file. Uploads are private and deleted after 24 hours unless you sign in, which claims them and keeps them for 7 days.
What survives OBJ → PLY
- Geometry
- Vertex colours where the OBJ carries them
What is not carried across
- Materials and textures. PLY has no field for them, and an OBJ's live in a separate .mtl that a single upload does not include.
- UV coordinates.
About Wavefront OBJ files
- An OBJ stores geometry only. Its materials live in a separate .mtl file, and its textures in separate image files.
- Uploading the .obj on its own converts the geometry. The materials and textures are not part of that file, so they cannot be carried across.
- Vertex colours written by some scanners are read where present.
Why PLY
- Carries per-vertex colours, which most interchange formats drop.
- Widely read by photogrammetry and scan-processing tools.
Common problems
- The PLY has no colour.
- Most OBJ files colour a model through a material or texture rather than per vertex, and neither is part of the .obj. PLY stores per-vertex colour only, so there was nothing to write.
- The model is the wrong size in my scan tool.
- Neither OBJ nor PLY declares units. The numbers are carried across unchanged, so set the scale in the tool that opens it.
After converting
Converting changes the container, not the geometry — a heavy model stays heavy. If the result is destined for the web or a game engine, reducing its triangle count is the part that makes it load faster.