Export XYZ fail

Discuss Pointools software here.
jedfrechette
V.I.P Member
V.I.P Member
Posts: 1236
Joined: Mon Jan 04, 2010 7:51 pm
14
Full Name: Jed Frechette
Company Details: Lidar Guys
Company Position Title: CEO and Lidar Supervisor
Country: USA
Linkedin Profile: Yes
Location: Albuquerque, NM
Has thanked: 62 times
Been thanked: 219 times
Contact:

Re: PLY point compression ?

Post by jedfrechette »

lastools wrote:Is PLY often used for storing point data?
It can be, see the Stanford Scanning Repository, who originally developed the format:

http://graphics.stanford.edu/data/3Dscanrep/

PCL (http://docs.pointclouds.org/trunk/class ... eader.html) and a few other programs also support it.

The format doesn't add much over a plain text file so I don't use it that often.
lastools wrote:What triangle mesh formats do you commonly use?
As an intermediate format for moving between programs .ply and .obj seem to be the most widely supported. Many programs claim to have some level of VRML support but I've generally found it pretty unreliable in most cases.

Best,
Jed
User avatar
lastools
V.I.P Member
V.I.P Member
Posts: 144
Joined: Tue Mar 16, 2010 3:06 am
14
Full Name: Martin Isenburg
Company Details: rapidlasso - fast tools to catch reality
Company Position Title: creators of LAStools and LASzip
Country: Germany
Skype Name: isenburg
Linkedin Profile: Yes
Been thanked: 1 time
Contact:

Re: PLY point compression ?

Post by lastools »

Hello from @LAStools,
jedfrechette wrote:
lastools wrote:What triangle mesh formats do you commonly use?
As an intermediate format for moving between programs .ply and .obj seem to be the most widely supported.
Is this really still the case? PLY and OBJ are two of the first formats created. And that was at a time when meshes of the size of the Stanford Bunny with a few thousand vertices and triangles were common. These standard indexed formats were good enough in the days where you could quickly load the model in memory, but now that we are working with meshes in the billion triangle range they are no longer appropriate. We tried to make this point a few years back suggesting the use of a streaming mesh format where loading, visualization, processing, and saving can happen in an interleaved manner.

Which are the main software packages used to turn gigantic point clouds into gigantic triangle meshes. I know of Raindrop Geomagic. Any others?

Regards,

Martin @rapidlasso

rapidlasso - fast tools to catch reality

Image
jedfrechette
V.I.P Member
V.I.P Member
Posts: 1236
Joined: Mon Jan 04, 2010 7:51 pm
14
Full Name: Jed Frechette
Company Details: Lidar Guys
Company Position Title: CEO and Lidar Supervisor
Country: USA
Linkedin Profile: Yes
Location: Albuquerque, NM
Has thanked: 62 times
Been thanked: 219 times
Contact:

Re: PLY point compression ?

Post by jedfrechette »

lastools wrote: Is this really still the case? PLY and OBJ are two of the first formats created.
Sadly yes, .obj is still pretty much the gold standard for exchanging geometry. Although it's designed to do much more than just rigid geometry the Alembic format has seen pretty rapid adoption in the film and game industries, especially by the big studios, since its release a year ago. Hopefully, it will start becoming more common outside of the studio pipelines and start showing up in more off-the-shelf programs.
lastools wrote:Which are the main software packages used to turn gigantic point clouds into gigantic triangle meshes. I know of Raindrop Geomagic. Any others?
PolyWorks is the laser scanning program I have the most experience editing large meshes in. The original meshes themselves are usually generated with our internal tools based largely on the algorithms in PCL. Note that once you start working with meshes the number of software options available increases tremendously. Of course, all of these programs have their own internal file formats. In the case of PolyWorks, the specification for the format is included in the documentation. It is a pretty simple binary format with no compression.

Best,
Jed
Scott
V.I.P Member
V.I.P Member
Posts: 1037
Joined: Tue Mar 29, 2011 7:39 pm
13
Full Name: Scott Page
Company Details: Scott Page Design- Architectural service
Company Position Title: Owner
Country: USA
Linkedin Profile: No
Location: Berkeley, CA USA
Has thanked: 205 times
Been thanked: 78 times
Contact:

Re: Export XYZ fail

Post by Scott »

lastools wrote:
"Which are the main software packages used to turn gigantic point clouds into gigantic triangle meshes. I know of Raindrop Geomagic. Any others?"

I've been asking the same question over the past year. Just a few days ago I found this (link below) and found it worth spending ~51 min. to see what Rapidform XOR was all about -especially concerning terrestrial scanners:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4sZU0Nl3i-s

There is a need for a robust, easy to use, stable editing platform with strong export capabilities, and I'm still looking for the right combination of features. It may be Pointools, Rapidform, or even something else. Revit holds great potential, but I'm still waiting for the Alice Labs tools to improve the product (editing features) for use in architecture practice, before I open my wallet.
Post Reply

Return to “Pointools”