The STL, or Standard Triangle Language, file format has been around since the '80s and is supported by most modern 3D modeling applications. In particular, the STL format has become something of a standard format within the area of 3D printing, despite the rise of more modern formats such as 3MF.
STL files come in two flavors: binary or text format. The text format is human-readable, making it easy to perform manual edits, but can lead to very large file sizes. As you can imagine, the binary format is much more compact and represents the majority of the STL files you are likely to encounter.
The format itself is very simple; the 3D model is represented by a sequential list of triangles, with each triangle defined with 3 points consisting of their X, Y, and Z positions, along with an additional vector that contains the face normal (the direction the face is pointing). There is an additional attribute block for each triangle; however, this is largely unused and thus unsupported.
STL Converter Capabilities
When converting 3D model or mesh files using our STL converter, we will attempt to convert color materials into a suitable format for use in the converted file.
| Extension | VTP |
| Full Name | Visualization Toolkit |
| Type | 3D Model |
| Mime Type | application/octet-stream |
| Format | Binary |
The VTP file format is the successor to the older VTK format. Updated to store data in a structured XML format rather than the bespoke plain text structure of the VTK format. The same 3D elements that could be stored within a VTK file can be transferred to the VTP format.
As VTP files are based on plain text XML, binary 3D model data can be encoded using the Base64 encoding method, which allows binary data to exist within plain text structures such as XML. This binary model data consists of common 3D geometric elements such as vertices, faces, and surface material information.
The VTP format also allows 3D model data to be stored in a compressed format prior to the Base64 encoding process to help reduce the overall file size. VTP files can be imported into several 3D editing applications, and we have a set of VTP conversion tools to convert these files to other popular 3D formats, such as STL.
