Hi I looked into this for a project I was working on for visualising point clouds generated from computational physics simulations. I recall that I managed to get the points rendering in Blender Render with a few quick hacks and duplicating the colour data onto individual vertices (maybe not the best idea). I ended up switching to VTK and ParaView for most of my scientific data visualisation, but I would be interested if someone were to implement a basic pipeline as described by Jace Priester but with a step 6:
6) Support for community add-ons (through python) for preforming basic data/point processing/rendering operations. ParaView provides a large selection of operators, some of which would be trivial to implement in blender if a pipeline was set-up. This idea might also be of interest to Shabbir Marzban, whose recent GSoC email to the mailing list included a proposal to integrate Bundler: "1) Automated rigid structure reconstruction from set of un-ordered images: A very common structure from motion (SFM) tool, Bundler[1] can be used to recover 3D point cloud from such images." Thanks, Isaac Lenton PS: The mailing list seems to be blocking some of my emails, not sure if this will get through. On Mon, 2013-04-29 at 15:02 -0700, Jace Priester wrote: > I wrote in point cloud support for Blender over a year ago, but I have been > told repeatedly by the developers that there is no interest in the > community and therefore they aren't interested in implementing it. > Hopefully another voice will help with that. > > The code isn't extensive as is. It requires a custom data layer to support > true per-vertex color (as Blender currently implements vertex color as part > of face data - not vertex data). There's a bit of extra code in the mesh > drawing functions to access the colors in the custom data layer, and then > it draws points to the screen using the set colors. As a bonus, it also > supports per-vertex sizing which allows for point distance attenuation > (which is necessary for a good appearance). My current code does *not* > integrate with any rendering engine - it only works in the editor window - > and I gave up trying to get help taking it any further, as I don't use it > that often anyway. > > If a developer knowledgeable enough about BI/cycles wants to hop in and > help with finishing this, I'd be happy to collaborate. I see no need for > blender to be a point cloud editing program. Meshlab and others are better > suited to that, as that is specifically what they are built for. But the > ability to import and display point cloud data, in my opinion, is vital to > Blender being usable in more fields than it is now. So that said, I think > short term and easily attainable goals should be to > > 1) import point cloud data in a couple common formats (I have done this > already) > 2) display points with colors and distance attentuation (also done) > 3) export point cloud data (also done) > 4) some user interface controls for turning colors on/off, adjusting > displayed vertex size and attenuation (have not done any of this) > 5) support for render at least in BI > > > > On Mon, Apr 29, 2013 at 2:19 PM, Antoine Cottin <acot...@ultiscan.com>wrote: > > > Hi y'all, > > > > Sorry for the repost this might be obvious or not, but after re-reading my > > previous post, I feel that need to mention that our goal is not to produce > > a tool dedicate to our sole use. Our goal is to develop a tool for us and > > the Blender community that will be release under GPL. > > > > Cheers. > > Antoine > > > > ####### > > > > My name is Antoine Cottin, I'm a research scientist specialized in active > > remote sensing applied to earth sciences. For the last 8 years I've been > > working for/with a laser scanner manufacturer developing processing tools > > chain for laser scanner data processing. I have an extended knowledge in > > the various laser scanner systems (hardware and software) and their > > associated data format. > > > > I'm the founder of Ultiscan, a French base company, specialized in laser > > scanning services. > > > > Our main objective/activity at Ultiscan beside laser scanning assets is > > data fusion between laser scanner data (points cloud) and 3D assets for 3D > > rendering and animation. Here is an example of one of our last project. > > This purpose of this project was to merge a 3D asset (the front gate of the > > heritage building) with a point cloud of the whole building to show to the > > client how the restoration of gate of the building would look like (some > > work on texturing is still required): > > > > https://www.dropbox.com/s/u6bj80fi8ajqq8r/00_Gruss_Fusion_100p_Black.mp4 > > > > The gate have been mesh, from the laser scanner data, and then > > retopologize (from ~2500k faces to 600 faces), texture and render with > > Blender. The points cloud animation was done with a commercial software. > > Then the two pieces was merged together. To do that, we used Blender for > > the camera tracking, the render and the compositing of the final result. > > > > Needless to say that it is doable but a bit tedious. Also, reconstructing > > the 3D space from camera tracking defeat the initial purpose of using 3D > > laser scanning data which are per essence more dense and most likely more > > accurate. > > > > My company, and I, would love to have the points cloud capability > > integrate to Blender to being able to generate this kind of animations (but > > nicer), > > > > https://www.dropbox.com/s/qrlmt3zq84knlpq/00_Gruss_PointCloud_Animation.m4v > > > > but also to streamline and help with some of the VFX pipeline. > > > > So we did some scripting to test the capability but obviously python > > scripting isn't the good approach to read and display millions of points. > > It also remain the question on how to efficiently display a points cloud ? > > as point cannot be rendered, a turnaround is needed. We tried to put a > > small circle at each point of the points cloud but this literally overflow > > Blender. > > > > In the shed of our tests, we have to get into Blender development for this > > and we are willing to give a try. I've contacted Ton Roosendaal and he told > > me to post the idea in here to discuss it's relevance. > > > > I'm a self taught coder and I've been coding for the last 13 years mainly > > in IDL/ENVI, which is a dedicate remote sensing/data visualization > > language. I've knowledge and more limited expertise's in C and > > object-oriented language like python and objective-C. > > > > I think the best way to succeed to such project would be to team-up with > > some mentor(s) that already have experience in Blender development. So if > > someone is interested in this project, please give us a shout. > > > > Please give us your idea on this project. > > Looking forward to discuss this exiting project with you. > > > > Respectfully your. > > Dr. Antoine Cottin > > ------------------------------- > > Ultiscan > > > > _______________________________________________ > > Bf-committers mailing list > > Bf-committers@blender.org > > http://lists.blender.org/mailman/listinfo/bf-committers > > > > > _______________________________________________ Bf-committers mailing list Bf-committers@blender.org http://lists.blender.org/mailman/listinfo/bf-committers