Python plyfile vs pymesh

I have succesfully used plyfile while working with pointclouds.

It's true that the poject had not presented any activity from a long time, but It meets its purpose.

And is not like the fact of parsing a ply file were something that allows you to recreate yourself by adding new features.

On the other hand PyMesh offers you many other features besides parsing ply files.

So maybe the question is:

Do you want to just 'read, manipulate and write PLY files' or are you looking for a library that provides more extra features?

What made me choose plyfile was that I'm able to incorporate it to my project by just copying 1 source file. Also I wasn't interested in any of the other features that PyMesh offers.

---

Update

I ended writing my own functions to read/write ply files (supporting ascii and binary) because I found the plyfile source code a little messy.

If anyone is interested, here is a link to the file: ply reader/writer

As of (2020 January).

None, use open3d. It's the easiest and reads .ply files directly into numpy.

import numpy as np
import open3d as o3d

# Read .ply file
input_file = "input.ply"
pcd = o3d.io.read_point_cloud(input_file) # Read the point cloud

# Visualize the point cloud within open3d
o3d.visualization.draw_geometries([pcd]) 

# Convert open3d format to numpy array
# Here, you have the point cloud in numpy format. 
point_cloud_in_numpy = np.asarray(pcd.points) 

References:

• http://www.open3d.org/docs/release/tutorial/Basic/visualization.html
• http://www.open3d.org/docs/release/tutorial/Basic/working_with_numpy.html