Calculating Snow height from Point Clouds

[domi1711]

Hi,

we need to get information about the amount of snow on Rooftops.
We have laserscans of the buildings with and without snow, but i am unable to get find a solution myself.
I tried using MPlane, but it doesnt work, since it wont let me use the plane from Point Cloud A and then measure the distance to Point Cloud B.
Since the roofs are relatively complex structures, a simple plane comparison between point cloud A and Point Cloud B is not enough.

Can you provide me some tips what i could try? The ideal outcome would be a colored height map of only the snow, so you can see the individual thickness of the snow layer in one picture.

Thank you in advance!

best regards,
Dominik

[daniel]

Are you able to properly register/align the two clouds?

Then you should use either Cloud-2-Cloud or M3C2 distance computation tools (see https://www.cloudcompare.org/doc/wiki/i ... omputation).

[domi1711]

Hi,

Thanks for your input!
Aligning the clouds is a bit challenging, because one of the clouds is covered in snow, so to pick the 4 point pairs is difficult. Maybe we need to use ground control points to align them properly?

The automatic aligning function would be nice, but i think there would be problems because of the snow layer. Do you have any tipps on that matter?

best regards, Dominik

[daniel]

Yes, GCPs would be ideal indeed.

And if you really have snow everywhere on the second cloud, then indeed automatic alignment might not give a very reliable result ;)