Point Cloud Plugin

[vparx]

Hi,
First of all this is really awesome stuff, thank you!
I've been playing around the last days, had some issues with importing and some crashes but now seems that everything is working very nicely!

One thing I noticed is that if I take a normal res screenshot everything looks the same but if I take for example a 4k screenshot then the pointcloud gets very sparse. I believe this is a bit obvious since is just pixels. Same happens with capturing a sequence in 1280x720 which renders fine and the same sequence in 4k goes quite sparse.
Would be very nice if we can control this somehow, maybe by changing the size of the points? Anyway, just an idea for an updated version. If we can have control on the size of the points, if that's possible at all or some resizing trick, would be super cool!

Thanks again for the great work!

[phoboz]

Hi,
First of all this is really awesome stuff, thank you!
I've been playing around the last days, had some issues with importing and some crashes but now seems that everything is working very nicely!

One thing I noticed is that if I take a normal res screenshot everything looks the same but if I take for example a 4k screenshot then the pointcloud gets very sparse. I believe this is a bit obvious since is just pixels. Same happens with capturing a sequence in 1280x720 which renders fine and the same sequence in 4k goes quite sparse.
Would be very nice if we can control this somehow, maybe by changing the size of the points? Anyway, just an idea for an updated version. If we can have control on the size of the points, if that's possible at all or some resizing trick, would be super cool!

Thanks again for the great work!

Hi vpardinho

The plugin allows for two rendering methods:
1. Points - where each point is literally just a pixel on a hardware level (no option to change it)
2. Sprites - where each point is actually a 2D plane, which size you can control from inside Point Cloud Settings window. Keep in mind that the sprites are more expensive to render and they use about 4.5x the amount of VRAM

Hope that helps

[xN31]

How big is the file? -> Approx 1.5GB (as said, worked fine in the past)
Are you using Density/Noise Reduction? -> Default settings (no density reduction, noise 5)
Is the task manager showing activity?-> Yes, 15% all the time
Did you try loading a subset of the file (using First/Last Points)? -> Tried after you suggested :-) Here the fun begins. 0->74982 works fine, anything above hangs. Line 74983 looks perfectly ok. I started removing lines from the source file and ended up with a file with only 3 points which still hangs the editor (see test3.txt in attach). Delete the last line and it work, cannot figure why.... 8-/
Are you using RGB and if so, did you manually specify the range? -> Yes, Y set to 65535
Did you change any other default settings? -> No

Thanks for your help! :-)

phoboz : did you have a chance to test the point cloud I attached to my previous post? Do you get the same behaviour?

[phoboz]

phoboz : did you have a chance to test the point cloud I attached to my previous post? Do you get the same behaviour?

Hi xN31

Not yet. I'll try to sit down to it tonight.

[J.Kimberley]

phoboz Hey dude, do you have an base material setup to play around with, in order to make a custom material? I have no idea where to start making a custom material for the point clouds. I made an explosion and filled it with points in Houdini but I'm trying to show specific connections of points within the cloud so I'd like to make it a kind of transparent volume at times, I made a super rough concept. do you think a material like this could be made?

[phoboz]

phoboz Hey dude, do you have an base material setup to play around with, in order to make a custom material? I have no idea where to start making a custom material for the point clouds. I made an explosion and filled it with points in Houdini but I'm trying to show specific connections of points within the cloud so I'd like to make it a kind of transparent volume at times, I made a super rough concept. do you think a material like this could be made?

Explosion sounds like a better fit for particle system than a static point cloud, I'd look into vector maps if you want particular shapes. But if you really want to use the plugin here's what my approach would probably be like:

First two pics look like a simple world space XYZ to RGB convert - easily doable. Opacity is also supported. As for showing connections, i'd probably start with baking it out as texture and use triplanar mapping to apply it.

Look inside the materials attached with the plugin for how to build yours.

[J.Kimberley]

Thanks for the help, the explosion is just for a test, the first to Pics are what I have so far. I'm using the plugin to look at big data, for example twitter accounts. 60 million points to represent an account, when it was created and the interests it has based on what it follows. I've converted data from CSV to text with XYZ RGB Just wanted to figure out where to start with making custom materials to animate opacity or hide/show sections of the data, then I will have to look at drawing connections between two points, I might do vertex animation as simulation in houdini and import it to ue4.

[localstarlight]

Hi,
This looks like an amazing plugin! I've managed to get my data in there perfectly (and so easily!) but I'm having trouble figuring out how to create a custom material. I've tried looking at the materials in the plugin content folder, but it's not clear what they all are (what do 'P', 'PC', 'S' and 'SC' stand for?) and also all of them are Default Lit.

What I need is an Unlit material with translucency where I can define the opacity, and the imported particle colour can be used to colour the sprite.

Everything I'm trying either crashes the editor, or doesn't show up at all.

Essentially what I need is the 'Sprite Unlit RGB' render method, but where I can define the sprite (so it's not just a blank square), and can control opacity.

Is there a way to do what I'm trying to do?

EDIT

OK, so I've figured out that the material I need to be working with is M_PointCloud_SC, and have got translucency etc. working fine. The only thing I can't figure out is how to actually set the sprite, so that it's an actual sprite not just a blank square...

[phoboz]

Hi,

Hi,
This looks like an amazing plugin! I've managed to get my data in there perfectly (and so easily!) but I'm having trouble figuring out how to create a custom material. I've tried looking at the materials in the plugin content folder, but it's not clear what they all are (what do 'P', 'PC', 'S' and 'SC' stand for?) and also all of them are Default Lit.

P - Point
S - Sprite
C - Color (uses Vertex Color channel for either full RGB or Intensity)

They are all Default Lit because the code is overwriting the material flag when and if needed

Everything I'm trying either crashes the editor, or doesn't show up at all.

When you assign your custom material, the plugin will attempt to check what is being used in it, so that it can adjust the GPU buffers to best fit the data and maximally reduce VRAM footprint. That process is not 100% robust and may result in crash if you are changing the material while it's in use. I recommend you hide the cloud prior.

The only thing I can't figure out is how to actually set the sprite, so that it's an actual sprite not just a blank square...

If you mean assigning the texture to it, you should be able to do that like with any other material (although, to be honest I haven't tried that lately )

[phoboz]

For anyone requiring access to UVs inside the Pixel Shader (like applying textures) follow the steps below:

1. Close the editor
2. Download this shader file
3. Replace the file in Plugins/PointCloudPlugin/Shaders/Private with the one you just downloaded
4. Start the editor again. WARNING: It will recompile all shaders so be patient!
5. Enjoy

This is only relevant for versions up to and including v0.3.1 as any following ones will include the updated file out-of-the-box.

[J.Kimberley]

phoboz Thanks dude, that shader update worked a treat. at the moment I'm trying to draw lines between points within the cloud, for now I can draw line to random vector position within bounds.But, do you know if it is possible to access the transform of vertexes in the point cloud, I've seen an example to get vertex point in static mesh, can I convert the point cloud to static mesh somehow?

[phoboz]

phoboz Thanks dude, that shader update worked a treat. at the moment I'm trying to draw lines between points within the cloud, for now I can draw line to random vector position within bounds.But, do you know if it is possible to access the transform of vertexes in the point cloud, I've seen an example to get vertex point in static mesh, can I convert the point cloud to static mesh somehow?

You can access the point data (same data you import), but you'd have to use c++ for this as I don't think I've exposed it to blueprints. Look inside PointCloudRuntime/Public/PointCloud.h for info.

If you meant the individual vertex data of the sprites, then no, as those are being positioned inside material. You'd have to look at the transformation material function (inside plugin material folder) and essentially do the same process, but on the CPU side.

No conversion through the plugin is possible at the moment

[localstarlight]

Thanks so much for updating that so quickly, works perfectly now!

I have some more questions:

1. Is there any way to introduce controllable/random rotation into the sprites? So that each sprite could still be camera-facing, but rotated a certain amount?

2. I would like to be able to render point clouds outside the main pass into the stencil buffer. Unfortunately, all the rendering settings (PointCloudActor->PointCloudComponent->Rendering) are inaccessible. Is there any way to make these settings accessible?

3. Is there also a way to counteract the roll of the camera? I'm using this in VR, and all the sprites rotate with the roll of the HMD - in a particle system you have the option of choosing 'Remove HMD Roll' to offset this. Is there a away to do something similar in a material?

Thanks!

[phoboz]

1. Is there any way to introduce controllable/random rotation into the sprites? So that each sprite could still be camera-facing, but rotated a certain amount?

There is now
Download v0.3.2 and the Transform node will now have an input for rotation. Its in a form of float3(Roll, Pitch, Yaw). As it adds extra vertex instructions it's disabled by default - you'll have to plug Static Bool with the value of True to the UseRotation input to enable it.

It applies the rotation prior to the camera facing calculations by default, but you can change that by setting relevant input.

2. I would like to be able to render point clouds outside the main pass into the stencil buffer. Unfortunately, all the rendering settings (PointCloudActor->PointCloudComponent->Rendering) are inaccessible. Is there any way to make these settings accessible?

If it's just a matter of exposing the parameters through PCA then it should be quick, but something tells me it won't be

3. Is there also a way to counteract the roll of the camera? I'm using this in VR, and all the sprites rotate with the roll of the HMD - in a particle system you have the option of choosing 'Remove HMD Roll' to offset this. Is there a away to do something similar in a material?

Simple answer: no.
Complex answer: you'd have to try to subtract the roll applied by the transformation node.

I'll add this to the list for the v0.4 release

[localstarlight]

Amazing, thanks!

Now that you've added the ability to rotate the sprites, there's a relatively easy way to offset the HMD roll, though I don't think there's a way to do it entirely within the material since you can't seem to access camera rotation in a material. On my Pawn I'm just taking the camera roll and remapping from -180 -> 180 to -PI -> PI and then setting that in a Material Parameter Collection. Then using that value as the Z component of the Rotation on the SpriteTransform node. Works perfectly, thanks!