Hi, Indeed, adding color CD layer to vertices is not a great deal. For render, I think the simplest solution would be to tweak a bit particles (we already have billboards, just would have to make them be able to take the color from actual vertices and not only from loops), a system with as much particles as vertices, emitted from those all at once and with lifetime=scene duration is a suitable way to render a points cloud. With a decent modern computer, Blender can render several millions of such billboards with no problem. :)
And we could also have some tool to convert points clouds to actual meshes + textures, which could generate much faster objects for rendering... So, especially if Jace already did part of the work (btw, Jace, any patch, branch or so available?), to get a basic usable and rederable solution should not be *that* hard! Best regards, Bastien On 30/04/2013 01:30, Isaac Lenton wrote: > 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 > _______________________________________________ Bf-committers mailing list Bf-committers@blender.org http://lists.blender.org/mailman/listinfo/bf-committers