tinyply

Why we included this project

tinyply is a single-header C++17 library for reading and writing PLY files, the format used for point clouds, scanned meshes, and increasingly for gaussian splatting models. It handles both binary and ASCII PLY, supports files over 4GB, and can read big-endian input, all without pulling in dependencies beyond the C++ standard library. That makes it a natural fit for point cloud tools, synthetic data renderers, and computational geometry libraries, which have used it for years. The 3.0 release adds a fast path for the common little-endian binary case, so the typical import path gets a speed boost. If you need reliable PLY support without adopting a whole framework, this is a solid choice.