Easy way to generate colour-per-vertex models for input to Blender

Question

I procedurally generate 3D planet models that I would like to import into Blender.

I use colour per vertex rendering in my shaders (In practice, I use the same colour for all vertices of a face, but my vertex attributes include RGBA.)

I like generating wavefront .obj files, because the syntax is so easy. But wavefront obj does not let me specify colour per vertex, or colour per face. Instead, the entire object is coloured with a material from the material-library that accompanies the obj geometry file.

I've looked into collada .dae as well, but frankly, that seems like a very complex format, and it still seems to work with material libraries, like the .obj format does.

Is there an easy to generate 3d model format that lets me specify a colour per vert (or face) without material libraries, and can be imported into Blender?

Answer 1

So, Stanford's .PLY Polygon File Format is the winner here.

Although, after the import into Blender, some actions are required to actually see the colours.

PLY supports colour-per-vertex and colour-per-face, but I've found that Blender can only handle the colour-per-vertex files.