[yt-users] Porting .ply files to Blender with colors?

[Jill P. Naiman]

Hi Matt,

I've tried a few different things with PLY files and no luck.  Actually, 
I'm not 
100% sure if Blender really likes PLY files anyway - you can't even export 
color easily in PLY format in Blender.  So, I've given up on PLY and have 
hacked together a bit of a messy OBJ exporter: 
http://paste.yt-project.org/show/3205/

I'm probably doing the colors wrong, since there's likely a nicer way to 
get actual "face" values then just taking the value at 1/3 of the vertex 
values, but it worked, so I didn't mess with it too much.

A few other things: (1) in theory, this can set transparencies, but I 
haven't got that working as of yet, (2) the default specular (ambient?) 
color settings make for a bit of a washed-out view in sketchfab: 
http://skfb.ly/54jged0b, (3) the .mtl file is a bit too long since I'm 
essentially setting each face as a different material, when one would just 
like to use 1 material per color and set all the faces with that color on 
a specific 
surface plot to that material, but I haven't got that bit working well 
either.

Thanks for the info, and please let me know if any of that doesn't make 
sense.
-Jill