Plyop

This section describes the plyop command-line utility and it's use.

Usage

usage: plyop [-h] [-c] [-g] [-n] [-{mM},<num,num,...>] [-{qQ},<num,num,...>]
         [-s,<x>[,<y>,<z>]] [-sort[,<mode>]] [-t] [-t,c] [-t,o]
         [-t,<x>,<y>,<z>] [-v] [-w] <in.ply> ... <out.ply>

  where ...

    -h               : this help message        
    -c               : strip color              
    -g               : geometry compact         
    -n               : flip normals             
    -m,<num,num,...> : 4x4 matrix xform         
    -M,<num,num,...> : 4x4 matrix xform (invert)
    -q,<num,num,...> : quaternion xform         
    -Q,<num,num,...> : quaternion xform (invert)
    -s,<x>[,<y>,<z>] : scale                    
    -sort            : sort faces bot to top    
    -sort,c          : sort faces center out    
    -sort,r          : randomly order faces     
    -t               : strip texture coords     
    -t,c             : translate center         
    -t,o             : translate origin         
    -t,<x>,<y>,<z>   : translate                
    -v               : verbose                  
    -w               : strip weight             
    in.ply ...       : input PLY files          
    out.ply          : output PLY file          

Example 1

A common usage of this utility is to sort the faces so that they display as expected, to translate the centroid point to the center of the object, and to move the object to the center of the 3-dimensional world space.

This can be accomplished by giving the following command (using the file "hires.ply" as the input file and writing out to a file called, "finished.ply"):

sgi 1# plyop -sort -t,c -t,o hires.ply finished.ply

Example 2

CyPie and CyEat output the midres.ply and lores.ply files with the surface normals flipped. This was to guarantee backwards-compatibility for some older systems and modeling conventions.

If you choose to work with either the medium- or low-resolution PLY files, you should use plyop to flip the normals to the proper orientation. This can be done as illustrated below:

sgi 2# plyop -n lores.ply lores.ply

sgi 3# plyop -n midres.ply midres.ply