Sample PLY Files — Download Meshes and Point Clouds for Testing
PLY — Polygon File Format (Stanford Triangle Format) · .ply · MIME type application/octet-stream
Download a sample PLY file to test a point-cloud viewer, a photogrammetry or scanning pipeline, or a PLY parser. There are two point clouds — 100,000 points in binary and 10,000 points in ASCII, each with XYZ, normals and RGB colour — and two triangle meshes with per-vertex colours, at 4,096 triangles (ASCII) and 51,200 triangles (binary little-endian).
PLY's header declares its own elements and properties, so it can carry anything from bare points to colours, normals and custom attributes, which is why scanners and research tools use it. That flexibility is also what parsers trip on; these files exercise the common property layouts. The points are sampled on the torus knot's surface from a fixed seed, so the cloud is identical every time you download it.
Download sample PLY files
| File | Details | Size | Download |
|---|---|---|---|
sample-mesh-vertex-colors-ascii.ply | 4,096 triangles · 2,048 vertices · normals · vertex colours · metres, Y up | 201 KB | |
sample-point-cloud-10k-ascii.ply | 10,000 points · normals · vertex colours · metres, Y up | 680 KB | |
sample-mesh-vertex-colors-binary.ply | 51,200 triangles · 25,600 vertices · normals · vertex colours · metres, Y up | 1.4 MB | |
sample-point-cloud-100k-binary.ply | 100,000 points · normals · vertex colours · metres, Y up | 2.7 MB |
Use these files from the command line or CI
Every URL is stable and CORS-open. Pin the SHA-256 in your test and you will know the moment a fixture changes.
# Download one file curl -O https://pnb-freetoolsforweb.s3.us-east-2.amazonaws.com/samples/3d/ply/sample-mesh-vertex-colors-ascii.ply # Verify it (SHA-256 is listed for every file above) shasum -a 256 sample-mesh-vertex-colors-ascii.ply # Machine-readable index of every sample file curl https://pnb-freetoolsforweb.s3.us-east-2.amazonaws.com/samples/index.json | jq '.files[] | select(.format=="ply")'
PLY format at a glance
| Full name | PLY — Polygon File Format (Stanford Triangle Format) |
|---|---|
| Extensions | .ply |
| MIME type | application/octet-stream |
| Encodings | ASCII and binary_little_endian 1.0 |
| Vertex properties | float x y z, float nx ny nz, uchar red green blue |
| Faces | list uchar int vertex_indices (meshes only) |
| Largest file | 100,000 points, 2.7 MB |
| Units | None in the file — these samples are metres, Y up |
What people test with sample PLY files
- Point-cloud rendering and LOD
- Vertex-colour display in mesh viewers
- ASCII vs binary PLY header parsing
- 3D scanning and photogrammetry ingestion
- Converting point clouds to meshes
- Parser performance on 100,000 points
Frequently asked questions
Is PLY a mesh or a point-cloud format?
Both. A PLY file with only a vertex element is a point cloud; add a face element and it is a polygon mesh. We publish both kinds so you can test that your viewer handles each.
Why is it called the Stanford format?
PLY was designed at Stanford in the 1990s to store data from 3D scanners, and the Stanford Bunny and Dragon scans were distributed in it. It remains the default output of many scanning and photogrammetry tools.
What units and up axis do these files use?
glTF, GLB, OBJ, PLY, OFF, DAE and USDZ are Y-up in metres (the torus knot is about 1.4 m across). STL and 3MF are Z-up in millimetres and rest on z = 0, as slicers expect. FBX is Y-up in centimetres. The units and up axis of each file are listed in its details, so you can check that your importer scales and rotates correctly.
Where do these models come from?
We generate them. A script builds the geometry from formulas (a torus knot, UV spheres, cubes, and a bracket made with a boolean modelling library), then writes each file format byte by byte from its specification. Nothing is downloaded, scanned or converted from someone else's model, which is why they are free for any use, including commercial, with no attribution.
Are these PLY files safe to download?
Yes. Every file is generated by our own open script from scratch — nothing is scraped or user-uploaded — and contains no scripts, macros or executables. The SHA-256 of each file is published on this page so you can verify what you received.
Can I use the sample PLY files commercially?
Yes. They are free for any purpose, including commercial products, test suites, demos and redistribution, with no attribution required. There is nothing to license and no one to ask.
Can I hotlink these files or use them in CI?
Yes. Every link is a stable direct URL over HTTPS with Access-Control-Allow-Origin: * and long cache headers, so curl, wget, fetch() and test runners can pull them directly. A JSON index of every file is linked from each page (see the command-line section).
Related sample files
Free tools that work with PLY
- Hash Generator — Hash text or files with MD5, SHA-1, SHA-256, SHA-384, SHA-512 and CRC32, verify a checksum, or compute an HMAC. Files never leave your device.
- Test File Generator — Generate a dummy file of any exact size in your browser — 1 KB to 2 GB, random bytes, text, CSV or JSON.
Found a problem, or something that could be better? We read every message and we fix things quickly.
Testing a file pipeline? We build them.
Uploads, conversions, previews, document processing and media workflows are the kind of production systems FreeToolsForWeb designs and runs for clients — which is why we needed these files in the first place.
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