PlyEdit: Clean

Face: Fig 2. Odd Faces
Finds and attempts to fix up "odd" faces. If you look at the top of Fig 2, everything looks fine. However, when viewed side on, you can see that the top faces are forming an archway over the faces beneath; this may have been created by the auto-fill tool. Click the Clean Face button, and all visible faces are checked and the problem areas are deleted and refilled.

Thin: Fig 3. Before and After Thin
3D scan data taken at a grazing angle can often generate long thin triangles. The left side of Fig 3 shows the shoulder area from a body scan, and you can see that the triangles there are stretched out in a particular direction. If there's some noise in the data, no matter how much you smooth it out, the long triangles will results in an obvious "grain" over the surface. Click the Clean Thin button, and all visible faces are checked and thin ones will be marked and multiplied to create more evenly proportioned triangles (see right side of Fig 3).

Edge: The Clean Edge tool attempts to clean up holes or boundaries by fitting a smoother line to the edges. It doesn't fill the holes, it just makes them look nicer by trimming off the jagged edges. This tool is still under development, so may not be enabled in all versions of PlyEdit.