CloudCompare forum

Ok, I have been trying to do a comparison of some clouds. However, when scalar field is switched off on the models as instructed in the tutorial video, it changes colour to white. In the tutorial video I watched (the one on this website for cloud comparison) it can clearly be seen that after he switched off scalar field, the cloud changed colour to brown. I also read somewhere (sorry didn't save link for the website) that a white cloud means a "blank cloud", while a coloured cloud is "RGB". However, my cloud to cloud/mesh comparison came out looking alright.

To get the point of the whole topic, I previously posted a question earlier asking the reason why my cloudcompare ASCII files are not opening in colour on Autodesk Recap but instead they open in either grayscale or black under the RGB setting and red under the intensity setting. I was wondering if the reason for this could be due to the fact that my clouds didn't not change colour to lets say brown after scalar field was switched off before comparison, which makes my clouds colourless "blank clouds"? :/

Also, I have been playing around with the settings as I have been desperately looking for a solution for this issue. I did my cloud to cloud comparison with the scalar field on-the result came out slightly weird as it was mainly displaying the scalar field. However, when I save the the file (as an ASCII ofc) and open it in Recap, the file opens as grayscale under the RGB setting but when under the Intensity setting it shows the scalar field with also the comparison (missing items were highlighted as red etc).

I am not sure if I am missing a step in the process or need to adjust something. I have even been thinking if a plugin is needed to allow the file/comparison to show properly under an RGB setting in recap or even in Naviswork...:/

Help :?

(have you tried with E57?)

In the tutorial video the cloud has brown colors after switching off the SF... because it had brown colors BEFORE.

When you load a cloud, it can have RGB colors or not. Moreover CC will always display the SF instead of the RGB colors if it founds one.

To check if the cloud has RGB colors, simply look at the 'Colors' drop down list in the cloud properties. You can have 'None', 'RGB colors' and 'Scalar field'. If you don't have 'RGB colors' then it means that no RGB information was originally loaded. You may see instead intensities (which are a Scalar Field fo CloudCompare).

When you compute the distances, you'll get a new 'Distances' scalar field on the compared cloud (something starting with C2C or C2M depending on the comparison you did).

To convert this SF to RGB colors you have to select the 'compared cloud' only, make sure the active scalar field is the one with distances (should alrady be active by default when you close the Comparison dialog) and then you must call 'Edit > SF > Convert to RGB'. This will create a RGB field if necessary, and otherwise it will overwrite the existing RGB field.

When you call 'Convert to RGB' CC will use the current display parameters of the active scalar field. Therefore you shouldn't see any difference. But you'll be able to change the 'Colors' source (between 'RGB colors' and 'Scalar field').

That makes more sense.

Converting the scalar field to RGB and saving as E57 did work.

Thanks!