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PLY Mesh Reducer

Reduce a scanned PLY mesh to the size you need and get a PLY back, binary or ASCII as it came, with vertex colours, normals and every other property kept.

📉
Drop a PLY file here or click to browse
Up to 300 MB · PLY (.ply)
Choose PLY file
Or drop several files at once: 3 on the free plan, up to 25 with a Day Pass or Pro.
1
Upload PLY
2
Set target MB
3
Download
MB
1 MB500 MB

We aim for exactly this size. Quality-preserving quadric decimation stops as soon as the file fits. If the mesh cannot be reduced further without breaking, we return the smallest safe result.

Pick a PLY file to continue.
🔒 Files are processed on our server in isolated memory and removed within 15 minutes of your download.
Server-sideProcessed on our server, then deleted

Your file is uploaded to our server to be processed, so it does leave your device. Temporary files are removed as soon as processing finishes, and the uploaded original is deleted automatically within 120 minutes at the latest. Nothing is stored permanently.

About

PLY is the format scanning software hands you. Photogrammetry and LiDAR tools such as Metashape, RealityCapture, Meshroom or Polycam export meshes with millions of triangles and a colour on every vertex, and a single room or statue easily reaches several hundred megabytes. That detail is the point of a scan, but at that size the file will not open in a web viewer, will not attach or upload, and makes every program that touches it crawl. This page decimates the mesh to the size you set and hands back a PLY, so nothing downstream has to change.

The output mirrors the input. ASCII stays ASCII, binary little endian stays little endian and binary big endian stays big endian, with the same element and property layout: vertex colours, normals, texture coordinates and any extra values your scanner wrote, such as confidence or quality. Software that reads your original file reads the result the same way. The one visible difference: a quad that had to change comes back as two triangles.

Simplification is driven by quadric error (meshoptimizer): every collapse is scored by how far it moves the surface, with normals, colours and texture coordinates weighed in, so flat stretches go first and a façade keeps its window frames while the triangle count drops. A binary PLY lands at 99.8 percent of the target or closer, because every vertex and face takes a fixed number of bytes; an ASCII PLY lands at 99.6 percent or closer. The reduction runs on a native C++ engine on our server.

Scans up to 300 MB upload in chunks and are deleted within 15 minutes of your download, at most 120 minutes if you never download. One PLY up to 50 MB a day is free; credit packs, passes and subscriptions cover the rest and are shared with the STL tools. Scan full of holes or loose fragments? PLY Repair closes the holes first, and keeps the colours too.

How it works

  1. 1Drop your .ply mesh (up to 300 MB) on the upload area.
  2. 2Set the target size in MB or pick a preset.
  3. 3Start the reduction; the mesh is decimated with its colours and properties.
  4. 4Download the reduced .ply in the same binary or ASCII encoding as your scan.

FAQ

›Do I get a PLY back in the same encoding?
Yes. ASCII stays ASCII, binary little endian and binary big endian stay as they were, with the same list of elements and properties.
›Are vertex colours and custom properties kept?
Yes. Vertex colours, normals and texture coordinates are kept, and so are extra properties such as confidence or quality values. Only the number of vertices and faces changes.
›How close to my target does it land?
A binary PLY lands at 99.8 percent of it or closer, because each vertex and face takes a fixed number of bytes; an ASCII PLY at 99.6 percent or closer. If the target cannot be reached, you get the smallest version and the result screen says so.
›My PLY is ASCII. Should I convert it first?
If your software reads binary PLY, exporting binary is a big saving on its own, often half the size or less, without removing a single triangle. If you need ASCII, upload it as it is and you get ASCII back.
›Can it reduce a point cloud?
No. Point clouds, PLY files with vertices but no faces, are not supported. Mesh the cloud first in your scanning software, MeshLab or CloudCompare, then reduce the mesh here.
›Is this the same as MeshLab's quadric decimation?
It is the same family: quadric-error edge collapse, here from meshoptimizer, with normals, colours and texture coordinates weighed in. The difference is that you give a size in MB instead of a face count, and it searches for the face count that fits. Quads that change come back as triangles.
›What does it cost, and is my scan kept?
One PLY up to 50 MB a day is free; credit packs, a 24-hour pass or a subscription cover the rest, shared with the STL tools. Scans are deleted within 15 minutes of the download, at most 120 minutes if nothing is downloaded.