# PLY file colors not displayed

**URL:** <https://discourse.slicer.org/t/ply-file-colors-not-displayed/4206>\
**Category:** Development\
**Tags:** extensions-manager\
**Created:** [September 27, 2018, 10:24am UTC](https://discourse.slicer.org/t/ply-file-colors-not-displayed/4206 "2018-09-27T10:24:17Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Showing post:** 6

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**Author:** ![lassoan](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex002/user_avatar/discourse.slicer.org/lassoan/32/13_2.png) [@lassoan](https://discourse.slicer.org/u/lassoan)\
**Post date:** [October 1, 2018, 12:02am UTC](https://discourse.slicer.org/t/ply-file-colors-not-displayed/4206/6 "2018-10-01T00:02:20Z")

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We usually use single-component scalars + a lookup-table for coloring, as it is much more flexible than burnt-in RGB values (you can threshold, recolor, etc. dynamically) . For displaying an arbitrarily textured model, we typically use .obj file format, because this is how we usually get these models.

Per-verted colored .ply files are not very common, but might be useful to display them directly, so I’ve added a new option “Direct color mapping” to colors module / display / scalars section. You can use this option to use per-vertex 3-component scalar values directly as RGB values (without mapping it through a lookup table). This feature will be available in Slicer nightly version that you download tomorrow or later.

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