Point cloud .pts to .ply in Blender

I have received a .pts file.
These are the first five lines of the .pts file:

2161426   
-4.20678 -2.78534 0.67217 213 215 219 230
-4.22023 -2.77447 0.03119 213 207 208 222
-4.22387 -2.76731 0.07319 214 206 208 220
-4.19342 -2.82999 0.03114 213 201 203 215

In Blender there is an option to import a .ply file.

Before importing I converted the .pts to .ply by adding this in front of the file.
The solution for this I found here.

ply
format ascii 1.0
element vertex 2161426
property float x
property float y
property float z
property uchar intensity
property uchar red
property uchar green
property uchar blue
end_header
-4.20678 -2.78534 0.67217 213 215 219 230
-4.22023 -2.77447 0.03119 213 207 208 222
-4.22387 -2.76731 0.07319 214 206 208 220
-4.19342 -2.82999 0.03114 213 201 203 215

And then saved the file as a .ply file and imported it into Blender, it worked.

However the colours are missing, I have two questions

  • How can I tell if a .pts file has colour support?
  • Is there an easier way to import a point cloud in Blender?

When importing the .pts file in BimCollabZoom colours were also missing, I also got sent an e.57 file. I checked it's a binary file. Are the colours perhapes stored in there?

Comments

  • Using Cloudcompare.
    I'm not familiar with ply.
    Check the pointcloud addon for Blender? https://github.com/uhlik/bpy#point-cloud-visualizer-for-blender-280
    What is your main objective with using point clouds? Why Blender?


    CoenGorgious
  • @magicalcloud_75 said:

    What is your main objective with using point clouds? Why Blender?

    It's a very small point cloud of the entrance of a historical city hall ('gemeentehuis'), It has a lot of complex ornaments/detailing. I thought Blender would be perfect for this to model over the point cloud to produce an IFC the contractor can use in his software.

    Bedson
  • edited November 2021

    Because it's kind over 'redrawing' a model (overtrekken) you can use whatever you are most comfortable with. Personally i try to avoid it as much as possible. Just use the survey data. Your remodelled enity may act as 'noise'. Check out what i made with CloudCompare. Company logo and all :)

    GorgiousCoen
  • @Coen said:

    @magicalcloud_75 said:

    What is your main objective with using point clouds? Why Blender?

    It's a very small point cloud of the entrance of a historical city hall ('gemeentehuis'), It has a lot of complex ornaments/detailing. I thought Blender would be perfect for this to model over the point cloud to produce an IFC the contractor can use in his software.

    Yay this is right up my alley ! I highly recommend the CloudCompare / Point Cloud Visualizer workflow to work with laser scanner data (Sanitize PC in CC and model over PC data in Blender).

    I also highly recommend the pro version of PCV addon (which I just noticed has a 2.0 version coming up with very interesting features) which is more performant and allows you to natively use a bounding box dynamic clipping object, which is life-saving when working in closed environments :

    I also wish Blender "Point cloud" features would involve 3d scanner data but I don't think that's their priority. It's more geared towards fluid simulation at the moment.

    CoenAceLaurensJN
  • Hi there, when I am importing the Point Cloud as PLY ASCII file, it says "Missing vertex normals". What should I do differently?

    This is my header:
    ply
    format ascii 1.0
    element vertex 1665377
    property float x
    property float y
    property float z
    property uchar red
    property uchar green
    property uchar blue
    end_header
    3049.954346 -1500.045288 39.680836 255 0 0

  • It's not really an error, rather an info message saying your point cloud doesn't have normals associated with it. Not all laser stations add normals to the points, but there are tools to compute them after the fact.

    The downside of not having normals is it can't be properly dynamically illuminated. But it should import correctly nonetheless ?

  • Here are some articles on the wiki about point cloud tools
    https://wiki.osarch.org/index.php?search=point+cloud&title=Special:Search&go=Go
    In the spirit of sharing knowledge please help improve those pages (even by simply linking to relevant discussion).

  • @duncan done ! I'd very much like to contribute to the wiki, but I'm more a Q&A kind of person, I don't really know where to start every time I open a blank wiki page. I'll try and remember to update the wiki when I see some relevant stuff.

    duncan
  • Great @Gorgious
    If you want to really tidy up the point cloud visualiser page a good template page / example to work from is the inkscape page.
    https://wiki.osarch.org/index.php?title=Inkscape
    Remember we're not trying to duplicate another sites effort, we're helping bind everything together.

  • @duncan said:
    Great @Gorgious
    If you want to really tidy up the point cloud visualiser page a good template page / example to work from is the inkscape page.
    https://wiki.osarch.org/index.php?title=Inkscape
    Remember we're not trying to duplicate another sites effort, we're helping bind everything together.

    Have tried to tidy this. (https://wiki.osarch.org/index.php?title=Point_Cloud_Visualizer)

    @coen Grabbed a screenshot from Your post, hope that is ok.
    @Gorgious Personally I have not used this, but looks great..maybe You can expand on this.

  • @CadGiru

    @coen Grabbed a screenshot from Your post, hope that is ok.

    Yes ofcourse, that's the strength of open source :-). This is the building if you wanted to know, haha

    magicalcloud_75
  • @CadGiru I suggest you make the "paid version" a link. Please also make the GPL-2.0-only as a link to the license - you'd be surprised how the license can be buried away on some projects. If the source is not public (not a requirement of the GPL) then I'm not sure where to link to.

  • @duncan said:
    @CadGiru I suggest you make the "paid version" a link. Please also make the GPL-2.0-only as a link to the license - you'd be surprised how the license can be buried away on some projects. If the source is not public (not a requirement of the GPL) then I'm not sure where to link to.

    Done

    duncan
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