Point Cloud Plugin

[david.gillespie]

Are E57 and PLY formats on the roadmap at all? It would be great to be able to have binary files (e57) and an ASCII format with extensibility and more data (ply). This would help this plugin tie in with wider asset management/scanning systems

Common 3D point cloud file formats & solving interoperability issues

[phoboz]

@.gillespie

Are E57 and PLY formats on the roadmap at all? It would be great to be able to have binary files (e57) and an ASCII format with extensibility and more data (ply). This would help this plugin tie in with wider asset management/scanning systems

Common 3D point cloud file formats & solving interoperability issues

Hi ,

E57 is on the current roadmap. It was originally intended for 4.25 release, but due to how tightly packed the schedule already is, we decided to postpone it and sync it with 4.26 release instead. We don’t want to force implement a feature without having enough time to properly test it

PLY is backlogged for now - there hasn’t been much interest in it so far.

[LipcaCZ]

Hi , thank you for this great plugin! Could you help me with my problem please?
I’m creating a demo which will be showing some of my 3D scans.
I want to start with pointclouds which will morph into mesh using this dissolve effect.
Problem is that the effect works nicely for mesh, but does not work for pointcloud. As you can see in the video, when I change the amount value in mesh material instance, it’s updating immediately in game, but when I do the same for pointcloud material instance, it’s not updated immediately. It’s updated only after I release the mouse after changing the value. That would not be such problem in editor, but when I drive this value with blueprint, it does not update in game at all.
Is it somehow possible to make it work even for pointcloud or maybe it’s just not implemeted yet? Thanks.

UE4 Pointcloud dissolve effect problem

[phoboz]

@LipcaCZ

Hi , thank you for this great plugin! Could you help me with my problem please?
I’m creating a demo which will be showing some of my 3D scans.
I want to start with pointclouds which will morph into mesh using this dissolve effect.
Problem is that the effect works nicely for mesh, but does not work for pointcloud. As you can see in the video, when I change the amount value in mesh material instance, it’s updating immediately in game, but when I do the same for pointcloud material instance, it’s not updated immediately. It’s updated only after I release the mouse after changing the value. That would not be such problem in editor, but when I drive this value with blueprint, it does not update in game at all.
Is it somehow possible to make it work even for pointcloud or maybe it’s just not implemeted yet? Thanks.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KKI-j-f7kNE

Hi @LipcaCZ

Happy New Year!
I can confirm it is not intended behavior, fortunately, this has been fixed for the next release
If you need a workaround in the meantime, let me know how you assign the custom material and update it via BP.

Apologies for the inconvenience!

[david.gillespie]

Hi ,

E57 is on the current roadmap. It was originally intended for 4.25 release, but due to how tightly packed the schedule already is, we decided to postpone it and sync it with 4.26 release instead. We don’t want to force implement a feature without having enough time to properly test it

PLY is backlogged for now - there hasn’t been much interest in it so far.

Happy New Year!
Many thanks for the update and glad it’s coming. e57 is our highest priority as it’s a better file size than XYZ that we’ve been currently been using.

[phoboz]

@.gillespie

Happy New Year!
Many thanks for the update and glad it’s coming. e57 is our highest priority as it’s a better file size than XYZ that we’ve been currently been using.

Happy New Year!
Can you switch to LAS in the meantime? This should significantly cut down on the file sizes, as well as import times.

[anonymous_user_d20a8927]

Hello @

I have been working with point cloud data of all sorts since 2006.

My initial test for the plugin was a small .pts file project of 29 gigs. 100 laser scans of a building inside and out with regular geometry. It is nice to see how quick the plugin is on the BOXX Workstation laptop I am using ( i9, Quadro RTX). Still navigating functionality aspects.

I mentioned doing a point cloud based plugin when I visited Luis at Epic HQ in 2016. It is really nice to see Unreal support such data.

When is the next iteration of instruction documentation coming out for the plugin?

Will there be increased video editing and screen recording functions in the future?

I am still at the poking around phase at present. But, will likely have more questions, if that’s OK.

Keep up the good work.

[phoboz]

Hi there!

@ThatInterested

When is the next iteration of instruction documentation coming out for the plugin?

We are hoping to update the documentation coverage in-line with 4.25 release (subject to time constraints).

@ThatInterested

Will there be increased video editing and screen recording functions in the future?

If this is in relation to point clouds, I’m not sure what you mean. If not, then you’ll get better chances for a reply in a different thread, as this is outside of my scope

@ThatInterested

I am still at the poking around phase at present. But, will likely have more questions, if that’s OK.

Sure thing!

[hmental]

Hi! I have problem with plugin. I try create cloud point with blueprints using that tutorial Building new Point Cloud ( LiDAR Point Cloud: Constructing new Point Cloud at runtime )
Everything is well until “Assign the Cloud asset to a Point Cloud Actor” - i can’t find node ‘Create Point Cloud From Data’
There is node ‘Create Empty Lidar Point Cloud’ but not from data.

Is that tutorial old, someting was changed?

[anonymous_user_27b086f0]

Hello,

I don’t know if this is the right place to ask this, but it is the only place I have found.
I have joined unreal thanks to the potential this plugin brings as I would like to be able to view pointclouds in VR.
However I seem to have massive performance problems. I see on the plugin page there are pictures of massive point clouds(Imgur: The magic of the Internet).
So I wonder if there is a guide to optimise the pointclouds, for example some sort of occlusion culling where it doesn’t render the points behind the camera or something else?
Or maybe have a way to limit the amount of points being rendered? I would like to get something similar to the image I linked in VR.
(My current pointcloud is budget is 1million, which is a lot lower than i would like. But if i pop it to 10million my headset runs at 5fps. I have the point bias set to 0.035).

Thanks

[phoboz]

@hmental

Hi! I have problem with plugin. I try create cloud point with blueprints using that tutorial Building new Point Cloud ( https://pointcloudplugin.com/building-new-point-cloud-v06 )
Everything is well until “Assign the Cloud asset to a Point Cloud Actor” - i can’t find node ‘Create Point Cloud From Data’
There is node ‘Create Empty Lidar Point Cloud’ but not from data.

Is that tutorial old, someting was changed?

Hi there!

My apologies for the delayed reply, I don’t always get notifications of new messages.

Yes, the node has been somewhat updated:

[phoboz]

@Revisialtd

Hello,

I don’t know if this is the right place to ask this, but it is the only place I have found.
I have joined unreal thanks to the potential this plugin brings as I would like to be able to view pointclouds in VR.
However I seem to have massive performance problems. I see on the plugin page there are pictures of massive point clouds(Imgur: The magic of the Internet).
So I wonder if there is a guide to optimise the pointclouds, for example some sort of occlusion culling where it doesn’t render the points behind the camera or something else?
Or maybe have a way to limit the amount of points being rendered? I would like to get something similar to the image I linked in VR.
(My current pointcloud is budget is 1million, which is a lot lower than i would like. But if i pop it to 10million my headset runs at 5fps. I have the point bias set to 0.035).

Thanks

Hi and welcome!

If using VR, I would suggest increasing Screen Center Importance to somewhere 1.5 - 2.2 (depending on the cloud - too high and it will start showing strange visual glitches).
Setting the budget to 10M will significantly hit performance on most PCs, let alone if using VR Try to find a balance between the quality and performance - maybe start with 2-3M?

If you’re still struggling, let me know.

[justrw]

Does anyone have a suggestion on how to handle multi-frame pointclouds? I have PTS file per frame sequences that I would like to assemble into a UE animation. Any hints?

[softyoda]

Hello, I worked all night to test the point cloud addon, it works very well and integrates well with unreal engine (despite a feature I would like: merge point clouds on a level to keep the number of points displayed low).

Everything was working fine until I try to reopen my level, it crashes repeatedly when I try to open the level. I reported a bug here : https://answers.unrealengine.com/questions/946912/view.html

I tried to open it by disabling the plugin, and it works perfectly, without my point clouds.

I also tried to remove the point clouds, reopen the level, place my point cloud again (I had several of them, but I replaced one just for the test)
and it crashes the moment I activate the cast shadow option.

I have a lot of directional light in my scene, I don’t know if there are constraints/limits.

I can transfer you my level if you need it.

I used the .xyz format to import my cloud for the first time, then I duplicated to cut out parts of the cloud I animated.

I’d like if possible to fix the bug to reopen my scene, just to render a video.

Thanks.

[frost-xyz]

Having an issue with building the a generic scene on Android in 4.24.2 as soon as the plugin is enabled—would this be a bug or is Android not supported?

[frost-xyz]

Hi there!
First, my apologies for not replying sooner, but the notifications do not always come through.
The plugin is currently only compatible with Windows, Mac and Linux platforms. As I understand it, Quest is powered by a mobile chip so, unfortunately, it will not be supported just yet.

Thanks for the feedback.

Not quite sure what’s going on there - a few questions:

• Did you notice it on just this one cloud?
• Any pattern to the locations where it happens?
• Can you replicate the same issue in a fresh project as well?
• Is it just spotlight? Or do point lights and directional lights produce the same result?

If possible, could you zip the project and send it to me for testing? Only the bare minimum of files, which still results in the said issue

Ah, just seen this, not to worry.

[david.gillespie]

Hi there. Is there any way to transform a series of points rather than simply translating them at all with the move points tool?

[JaredM84]

[EDIT]
Looks like I’ve managed to answer my own question…
The very last file format that I hadn’t tried up until now was .LAS, and low and behold, LAS file format is the only one that correctly holds the RGB info.

So to answer my own question - use .LAS format for colour!

Hi.

Newbie here when it comes to UE4. but an extensive user of lidar data for surveying purposes.

Been playing around with this with great excitement at what it can already help me accomplish, and excited about future feature to potentially come,

Having said that, I am running into an annoying situation with colour.

When I set my cloud colour source to “data” it is not showing the true colour, only a grey cloud.
The colour source options for “Elevation” and “Position” show colour, but just not data source.

I have exported my scan out into many different readable formats (pts,xyz,las,txt, etc) yet can not get colour to come through.

Any ideas?

[Isjtar]

Hi,

The plug-in is really nice, glad to see it support4ed by Epic!

I’ve been trying it in VR and unfortunately the points flicker a lot. I suppose this is because of the optimisation system. In editor this problem isn’t as visible, I assume because the camera is less mobile, in VR it always moves a bit, which seems to cause points being culled and displayed differently every frame.
Is there any way to get around this, short of reducing my pointclouds to below the point budget?

Cheers

[phoboz]

Hey guys, sorry for the delayed response - holidays

@softyoda
Could you tell me, which version you are using? There was a bug related to shadow casting, which could result in crashes, but has been fixed a while ago.

@pp_rfrost
Mobile devices are not on the immediate roadmap This is mostly driven by the very limited processing power available, and the relatively high requirements to display point clouds.

@JaredM84
Could you send me a section of the cloud for testing?

@Isjtar
There have been significant changes done to how LOD system works in the next version - hopefully, this will solve your issues