FBX to PLY converter — a mesh for geometry tools
VTubeMe's FBX to PLY converter writes your .fbx as one binary PLY with positions, normals and UVs for MeshLab, CloudCompare and Open3D, in the pose the skeleton holds. Free, five conversions a day, up to 50 MB.
How do I convert an FBX to PLY?
Drop the .fbx on this page and download one binary .ply.
- 1Drop your binary .fbx into the box above, up to 50 MB; sign in when prompted.
- 2The file is opened in Blender on our server and every mesh is written into one binary PLY — positions, normals, UVs, and a colour per vertex if the FBX has a colour layer.
- 3Download the .ply.
- Accepts:
- one binary .fbx (7.1 or newer) up to 50 MB.
- Returns:
- one binary little-endian PLY, triangulated, all meshes merged.
- Costs:
- nothing, and no credits — an account, though: five conversions per account per rolling 24 hours, shared across all the free format pairs. Conversions that fail are not counted.
- Measured:
- 10,977 vertices and 16,867 triangles in, the same out, in 0.54 MB.
- Textures are not baked into vertex colours.
- No materials, rig or shape keys — PLY has none.
What actually happens to the file
This is the road from a production asset to analysis: a character or prop in FBX, and a tool — MeshLab, CloudCompare, Open3D, a paper's reference code — that wants PLY.
The geometry crosses exactly: 10,977 vertices and 16,867 triangles in, the same out, with a normal and a UV pair on each vertex. The FBX's unit is converted to metres when it is read, and the PLY holds metres, Z up. The 10 materials, 15 textures, 73 bones and 118 shape keys stay behind.
What this conversion cannot do
Measured on real files, not assumed. Everything below is a property of the formats or of the pipeline, and knowing it beforehand is cheaper than discovering it in your 3D tool.
Colour is written only if the model has vertex colours
PLY's colour is per vertex. A model that already carries a vertex-colour layer keeps it — a test cube with colours came out with red, green, blue and alpha on every vertex. A model coloured by textures, which is nearly every game character and every avatar, comes out with positions, normals and UVs and no colour: the images are not baked into the vertices, and a PLY cannot reference an image file in any way most programs honour.
No materials, no rig, one merged mesh
Measured on the sample avatar: 10 materials, 15 textures, 73 bones and 118 shape keys in, none out; ten meshes merged into one with the same 16,867 triangles. The file is binary little-endian with x, y, z, normals and the UV pair (s, t) per vertex, and it is written in the pose the skeleton holds.
Same numbers, Z up, no unit
Nothing is rescaled: a model 1.8143 units tall is 1.8143 units tall in the PLY, turned to the Z-up convention MeshLab and CloudCompare expect. PLY has no unit field, so the program that opens it decides what a unit means.
Uploads stop at 50 MB
This pair takes files up to 50 MB — half of what the GLB, FBX and OBJ pairs take among themselves, because dense scans and print files cost the converter far more memory per megabyte than a game character does. For scale: a binary STL of 50 MB is about a million triangles, and we converted one of 999,698. If your file is larger, decimate it first; MeshLab and Blender both do that without changing the format.
Five conversions a day, per account
This pair is free and takes no credits, but one account gets five conversions per rolling 24 hours across all the free format pairs together — the converter is one machine and this is what keeps it answering. Each slot frees itself 24 hours after it was used; nothing expires at midnight. Conversions that fail are not counted.
Frequently asked questions
Does the PLY keep the FBX's textures?
No. PLY has no materials and cannot point at image files in a way readers agree on. Only a per-vertex colour layer, if the FBX has one, is carried.
What is a PLY of a textured model good for?
Geometry processing: MeshLab, CloudCompare, Open3D and most research code read PLY more readily than anything else, and for measuring, remeshing, sampling points or computing distances the colour does not matter. If you need the model to look right, PLY is the wrong target — keep it as GLB.
Which pose is the mesh written in?
The one the skeleton holds in the file's rest state — animation is not read. The armature is applied to the vertices, so a skinned character comes out shaped like the character, not like its pre-skin data.
Can I look at the PLY afterwards?
Yes — the PLY viewer opens it in your browser. Open the PLY viewer →
The other format pairs
All 30 are free, all run the same pipeline, and all say what they drop.
FBX to GLB
FBX in, GLB out — free, one file.
FBX to OBJ
FBX in, OBJ out — free, zipped with its materials.
PLY to GLB
PLY in, GLB out — free, one file.
PLY to FBX
PLY in, FBX out — free, one file.
PLY to OBJ
PLY in, OBJ out — free, zipped with its materials.
GLB to PLY
GLB in, PLY out — free, one file.
FBX to STL
FBX in, STL out — free, one file.
FBX to DAE
FBX in, DAE out — free, zipped with its textures.
FBX to USDZ
FBX in, USDZ out — free, one file.
OBJ to PLY
OBJ in, PLY out — free, one file.
GLB to FBX
GLB in, FBX out — free, one file.
Blender (.blend) to FBX
Blender (.blend) in, FBX out — free, one file.
STL to FBX
STL in, FBX out — free, one file.
DAE to FBX
DAE in, FBX out — free, one file.
USDZ to FBX
USDZ in, FBX out — free, one file.
Only want to look at the file? GLB viewer, FBX viewer and OBJ viewer all run on your own device — nothing is uploaded.
Is your model going into VTubing?
If the model is a rigged character and it is headed for VTubing, none of these containers is the destination — VSeeFace, Warudo and VNyan load VRM. The VRM converter takes the same rigged FBX or GLB, maps its skeleton onto the VRM humanoid and converts the materials.
Open the VRM converter