CloudCompare forum

First off I would like to give praise to developing such a fine piece of software, from what I have seen it is phenomenal.

I have several point clouds that I would like to match point to point. My problem is they are massive and in a .bin format which takes ages to import and also creates thousands of scans. I used a Leica P20 scanner, not sure if that helps. The data, after exporting it from the scanner, is really hard to interpret which folder goes to which scan. I have 9 scans of a single ship. SO I was wondering where to start with the registration process. The scanner did take pictures as well and it would be nice to include the rgb values into the scan. If you could help out at all it would be greatly appreciated!!! I am performing this work for a college project and will and have already shared cloudcompare as a source for manipulating point clouds!!! Also I would definitely share the data, the files are huge though. I did register the scans before in leica cyclone and produced a .ptx of something close to the desired finished product. But some scans do not match up as good as they should, that's why I would like to start from scratch with the raw data and possibly pick points around the target I just do not know where to start with overlaying the photos onto the clouds and importing the clouds themselves.( I don't have access to cyclone anymore, and I think I like cloudcompare better!)

many thanks!! once again this is a phenomenal program!!

Hi,

First I don't think CloudCompare is suited to do multiple scans registration from scratch. It's more suited for cloud/cloud registration (a cloud being composed of multiple scans and representing a whole object or scene in my mind). Of course there's the "Point-pair based alignment tool" that could be useful here, but you generally get big distortion effects when registering scans "two by two". So if you want to work with CloudCompare I believe it will be better to only try to "fix" the ptx file you have already.

And for the color, same thing, you'll have to map the the points with the associated images BEFORE importing the cloud. Not sure how you can do that without Cyclone though...

Get thanks for the advice! I really appreciate it. I think you're right fixing what I have would probably be the easiest approach. Just thought it would be nice to import some raw data. I have some other scans just no software at the moment to stitch them together. Thanks again for taking the time to reply!! I'm sure you shall hear from me again.