OBJ to PLY converter — text mesh to compact binary
VTubeMe's OBJ to PLY converter writes your .obj as one binary PLY with positions, normals and UVs — smaller, and the format geometry tools prefer. Materials are not carried. Free, five conversions a day, up to 50 MB.
How do I convert an OBJ to PLY?
Drop the .obj on this page and download one binary .ply.
- 1Drop your .obj into the box above, up to 50 MB; sign in when prompted.
- 2The file is opened in Blender on our server and written as a binary PLY: positions, normals, UVs, turned to Z-up, no scaling.
- 3Download the .ply.
- Accepts:
- one .obj (or a .zip of its folder) up to 50 MB.
- Returns:
- one binary little-endian PLY, triangulated.
- 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.
- Materials and textures are dropped; textures are not baked into vertex colours.
- Quads and n-gons are split into triangles.
What actually happens to the file
OBJ writes every number as text; binary PLY writes it as four bytes. The same mesh is a fraction of the size and loads faster, and PLY is what MeshLab, CloudCompare, Open3D and most research code are built around.
The geometry is identical on both sides — 10,977 vertices, 16,867 triangles — with a normal and a UV pair on each vertex. What does not cross is the look: the model's 10 materials and 15 textures belong to the .mtl, and PLY has no equivalent.
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
Are the UVs kept?
Yes, as the s and t properties on each vertex; the test file's 10,977 vertices each carry a pair.
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.
Do I need the .mtl?
No. Nothing from the .mtl can be written into a PLY, so the .obj alone gives the same result.
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.
OBJ to GLB
OBJ in, GLB out — free, one file.
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 PLY
FBX in, PLY out — free, one file.
OBJ to STL
OBJ in, STL out — free, one file.
OBJ to DAE
OBJ in, DAE out — free, zipped with its textures.
OBJ to USDZ
OBJ in, USDZ out — free, one file.
GLB to OBJ
GLB in, OBJ out — free, zipped with its materials.
FBX to OBJ
FBX in, OBJ out — free, zipped with its materials.
STL to OBJ
STL in, OBJ out — free, zipped with its materials.
DAE to OBJ
DAE in, OBJ out — free, zipped with its materials.
USDZ to OBJ
USDZ in, OBJ out — free, zipped with its materials.
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?
A scan, a print file or a CAD part is not an avatar, and no format change makes it one: a VTubing avatar needs a humanoid skeleton and a face that moves. If what you have is a rigged character in FBX or GLB, the VRM converter maps its bones onto the VRM humanoid and carries the materials over, ready for VSeeFace, Warudo and VNyan.
Open the VRM converter