PlyReader

PlyReader provide a user-friendly api to read data from a ply file. All you need to do is to specify a entity class and call one function.

Quick Start

Firstly, on *NIX system, use following command to see the header of your ply file:

head -n 20 foo.ply

you will see a structure like this:

ply
format binary_little_endian 1.0
comment VCGLIB generated
element vertex 27788
property float x
property float y
property float z
property uchar red
property uchar green
property uchar blue
property uchar alpha
property float quality
element face 52113
property list uchar int vertex_indices
end_header

Secondly, you need to declare a class to describe your point cloud. Decorate the getter with an annotation @PcuElement. Make sure the name and type of field is corresponding to your ply header.

class YourPointCloud {
    private List<float[]> points = new ArrayList<>();

    @PcuPlyData(
        properties = {"x", "y", "z"},
        element = {"vertex"}
    )
    public List<float[]> getPoints() {
        return points;
    }
}

Thirdly, instantiate a PlyReader, use readPointCloud() to get your point cloud.

File file = new File("path of your ply file"); //ply file
PlyReader plyReader = new PlyReader();
YourPointCloud pc = plyReader.readPointCloud(file, YourPointCloud.class);

Annotation

Note that @PcuPlyData must be used on a getter of a List field. The value in the list must be an java array.