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The Polygon File Format (PLY) was principa … The Polygon File Format (PLY) was principally designed to store three dimensional data from 3D scanners. It supports a relatively simple description of a single object as a list of nominally flat polygons. It is both flexible enough to anticipate future needs and that is simple enough so as not to drive away potential users. The idea is to allow users to create their own utility functions that can be tailored to the file format and can read and/or write graphical representation of the data. These set of utilities can then be shared to the rest of the community.
The PLY format describes an object as a collection of vertices, faces and other elements, along with properties such as color and normal direction that can be attached to these elements. A PLY file contains the description of exactly one object. Sources of such objects include: hand-digitized objects, polygon objects from modeling programs, range data, triangles from marching cubes (isosurfaces from volume data), terrain data, radiosity models. Properties that might be stored with the object include: color, surface normals, texture coordinates, transparency, range data confidence, and different properties for the front and back of a polygon. rties for the front and back of a polygon.
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