PLY Format
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The PLY (Polygon File Format / Stanford Triangle Format) format, in both its ASCII and binary
(big- or little-endian) variants, is read by LoaderPLY. This library only loads PLY files — there is no
PLY writer; to export a mesh you loaded from PLY, convert it into one of the writable formats instead
(Binary v2 Format or JSON Format).
Loading a PLY file
final var loader = new LoaderPLY(new File("model.ply"));
final var it = loader.load();
while (it.hasNext()) {
final var chunk = it.next();
final float[] vertices = chunk.getVerticesCoordinatesData();
final short[] colors = chunk.getColorData();
final float[] normals = chunk.getNormalsData();
final float[] textureCoords = chunk.getTextureCoordinatesData();
final int[] indices = chunk.getIndicesData();
// process the chunk's geometry here
}The LoaderPLY(File) constructor throws IOException; load() throws LockedException, NotReadyException,
IOException and LoaderException; LoaderIterator.next() throws NotAvailableException, LoaderException
and IOException (omitted above for brevity).
The storage mode (ascii, binary_big_endian or binary_little_endian) is declared in the file’s own header
and detected automatically — the caller never needs to specify it.
Self-describing header
PLY files declare their own structure in a header, modeled by HeaderPLY (a list of ElementPLY, each with its
own list of PropertyPLY, plus free-form comments). Because of this, whether a chunk’s colors, normals or
texture coordinates are populated depends entirely on what the source file’s header actually declares:
chunk.getColorData(), chunk.getNormalsData() and chunk.getTextureCoordinatesData() return null when the
corresponding vertex property isn’t present in that particular file.