3D Point Clouds in Blender: Starter Guide

[@JoshuaAlbers]

This is exactly what I have been looking!

[@FlorentPoux]

Super happy this helps you @JoshuaAlbers

[@ohneohnemit8332]

Hello, Florent! Thank you so much for your tutorial video and it significantly has helped me a lot.

[@shi76b]

great video, i realy like that you added chapters on the timeline.👍 it is great that you can do this with vanilla blender for free.

[@FlorentPoux]

Thanks a lot for the kind words!

[@ДанилаМихеев-у5э]

Круто! Большое вам спасибо за урок! Пока очень мало информации о работе с точками в блендере, и ваш урок мне очень сильно помог. P.s. Спасибо нейросетям, которые перевели мне ваш ролик😅

[@FlorentPoux]

Haha beautiful! I am very very happy that it helps you! 🍻

[@Arjjacks]

Cool. Shift-D to duplicate elements, by the way. Alt-D to instance them.

[@FlorentPoux]

Haha thanks!

[@visuallhome7766]

Maybe it makes sense to use point cloud technology in the viewport to display a huge number of polygons and objects

[@FlorentPoux]

Definitly :)

[@JaanTalvet]

What scanner are you using for your capture? The walls you scanned don't seem to have the wavy lines issue I see in many RealSense 3D captures. nice work!

[@FlorentPoux]

For this specific project I used a Leica BLK360 + A Nikon Camera for Photogrammetry, and I then merged both point clouds

[@elbarzwalid7344]

what is the methodolgy used to learn the manipulation od this software ?

[@andreimariuteac]

where does the preprocessing happen?

[@FlorentPoux]

Hey! you mean the segmentation?

[@fordrivingandothers]

not seeing any color in blender 4.0

[@FlorentPoux]

In that case you need to add a special node in between, here is the trick: medium.com/towards-data-science/the-blender-handbook-for-3d-point-cloud-visualization-and-rendering-1700ebe69c7b?sk=c135d12524f60e9d9a0ee0c7b86ca84f

[@Jen-R]

Woooow, cool !!! Thank you!!!

[@FlorentPoux]

hehehe

[@rituparnaaddy3222]

Hello. Can you help me with solidification and smoothening of point clouds?

[@FlorentPoux]

Hey! Sure, what is your issue? You want to mesh your point cloud?

[@rituparnaaddy3222]

@@FlorentPoux the point cloud is in ply and stl format. I want to make it as 3D visualization solid and smooth structure. There are 5000 points.

[@tachikoma099]

Great video Sir, it's really really helps me !

[@FlorentPoux]

Glad to hear that! Looking forward to your creations!

[@scottjohnnyhelgemoaune2951]

Anyone else not getting the PLY (Experimental) option when importing?

[@ppbarr]

Hi Florent. Thanks for your interesting videos. Please, would you explain how did you make the "automatic segmentation of the point cloud" that you quoted in the video? Thanks

[@FlorentPoux]

Hey! Thanks a lot for the kind words! 🫶Ho yes, this is planned, and on the under 5 videos to be released very soon! Just making sure the code works for all OS 🌞

[@maxreed5372]

Can you do a tutorial on point cloud particle simulation using geometry nodes?

[@FlorentPoux]

Great idea, I will do!

[@theotries]

Hey!:) i did my first cloud point scan and everything works except the texture. I did added the "set Material" node but beside position and radius it doesnt show the "col". Maybe my scan has not saved the texture?

[@FlorentPoux]

Hmmm, indeed, what you can do, is check if your point cloud has color, for example in CloudCompare?

[@thibaultbunoust4954]

Great video. I need a advice, I created a .ply with polycam but when I import in blender ther is no Col in the spreadsheet and so I don't have color on my pointcloud. It's the same problem with .ply from Scaniverse or Postshot, maybe I missed something. Do you have an idea?

[@FlorentPoux]

Hey Thibault! Sure, Maybe you can explore your dataset in Python or CloudCompare, to check out your color field, and reformat it so that it is rightly taken into account for your Blender approach?

[@tiagopesce]

why my point cloud looks like a splash of water, not the shape of the stuff really captured???

[@FlorentPoux]

😅 this sounds interesting! Maybe some more context will help me see how I can help you!

[@millymilly8883]

Hey Florent, Thanks for sharing your knowledge ! I'm actually trying to convert a 3dscan with this method into pointclouds, everything is fine until I want to export it in .ply format...When I export it create a .ply file, but when I re import in blender, nothing appear. I tried to convert it into vertice, but again nothing appear when I import, do you have an explanation ? I'm not familiar with these technics in Blender, and I need it to use this point cloud into TouchDesigner. Thank you in advance for your answer

[@FlorentPoux]

Hey Millie, thanks a lot for the kind words! Hmmm, it could be a number of reasons, But I think the first step would be to make sure that you can open your ply in another software (E.g. CloudCompare), from there, make sure you have colors, and then, re-export as .ply (binary for example). Then, import into blender and follow the tutorial, maybe adding an 'instance on point" node if things are still not visualized. This should solve your issue

[@meakim6850]

Thank you so much for uploading valuable tutorial! But I would like to ask you which program did you use on the Step2: point cloud pre-processing

[@FlorentPoux]

yes of course! this is CloudCompare!

[@forumfremtid9910]

Very good! I need to export the file as fbx, but then the content gets lost. (From 190 mb to 33kb.) Any idea what happened?

[@FlorentPoux]

Thanks! Hmmmm, this is weird! So you meant that the .obj works but fbx not? Maybe switching the open3D version? Else check out with CloudCompare the conversion to see if this is an issue with the file or the library Open3D

[@bdamay]

Great video, thanks! I have a question for you about mesh sizes Blender can handle correctly. I have a mesh that is 1.5GB, i opened it allright, but coming to the mesh to point node, it lags and crash. I have 48GB ram,12 cores proc, and GTX1660. is that enough? I also didn't understand well the preprocessing part, is it cloudcompare you're using ?

[@FlorentPoux]

Hmmmm, I need to investigate why it crashes... But a first hint: handling large meshes may be the issue. Indeed, you could experiment this to see if this solves the issue: Go to cloud compare, drag and drop your 3d mesh, sample your mesh as a point cloud with the built-in function (select a number of point that is sufficient to keep your details), export as a .ply (binary) file, and then move onto following the tutorial. Does this solves your issue?

[@bdamay]

Thank you for the advice. In the past i used cloud compare to decimate meshes to get a reasonnable size from e57 source and export to ply, but that's all (what is reasonable size ? i didn't really investigate this further). I surely should learn this piece of software a bit more. Well, i'll try what you propose out and will let you know. Have a good day. Benoit @@FlorentPoux

[@albertcallejoamat7837]

Magnificent!... so, do you know how to convert those points to particles in Blender? THKS

[@FlorentPoux]

Thanks a lot! At this stage, you have can add a entity node to get them as particles if this allows you to work on specific single units

[@tiagopesce]

why "mesh-to-points" node "cleans" my cloud points instead of doing the same here? 8:00

[@FlorentPoux]

hmm, you may need to instantiate your points or make sure to swith the rendering mode to solid or texture

[@K1ngQu3ntin]

unforunately I don't have the option for Stanford PLY (experimental) any insight into why this may be? I have Dev tools and addons checked in preferences.

[@FlorentPoux]

With the new version, you can use the standard ply import, it gets the vertices sRGB

[@michaelhicks8603]

Is there a way to convert the point cloud directly into a mesh inside blender, without using external software?

[@FlorentPoux]

Hey Michael! Thanks for the question! In blender you have to use plugins or Python directly within to get to such possibilities automatically! I put that to my agenda of videos to do ;)

[@michaelhicks8603]

@@FlorentPoux thanks man! No stress or hurry, but that would be amazing if or when you can :) There are some nice open source option for point cloud processing including conversion to mesh and I will study these too. It would be cool to see more blender content on this subject, especially some more advanced ones that focus on accuracy retention while also optimising for real time video processing. I plan to try to proccess high density clouds from lidar survey, into models for pre-visualisation.

[@miqgio]

I can't import point cloud in blender (V. 4.0.2) there is no option in import PLY (experimental). It's visible in "Scene Collection" and shows just orange do in center. Any ideas?

[@FlorentPoux]

Hey Miqgio! The process is very similar though. What you can do is use the .ply importer, they now import the RGB information straight away. Thus, you can get everything from the Col attribute. The difference, si that you have to add a node "Mesh to Point" before the Set Material Node. Does this solves your issue?

[@michaelhicks8603]

Is there a point to mesh node?

[@bam1212]

This works

[@FlorentPoux]

beautiful! Very happy it is not just dreams haha