Point Cloud Plugin

anonymous_user_07ba773b · May 22, 2018, 2:25pm

Yes and yes.

phoboz · May 22, 2018, 5:14pm

Little preview of an upcoming feature in 0.4

anonymous_user_21e38222 · May 22, 2018, 7:18pm

Ooh LOD visualisation ! Perfect for performance debugging

phoboz · May 24, 2018, 8:47pm

You can now visit the plugin’s roadmap](Trello)to see what’s planned for upcoming releases

xN31 · May 28, 2018, 10:05pm

Amazing, thanks! Looking forward for the new features!

phoboz · May 29, 2018, 11:14am

This is how easy it is now to set up texturing and masks in 0.4

Thunder_Owl · May 30, 2018, 7:25am

Haha, this is one nice illustration…

phoboz · May 31, 2018, 5:09pm

Point Cloud Plugin v0.4
Release Notes

This one is a quite large release, with many systems changed, so I would appreciate any and all feedback, especially with regards to performance and stability. Thanks, and enjoy!
Download links are, as per usual, in the first post.

New Features / Improvements

Multiple global performance improvement, including significant responsiveness increase of selecting and dragging PointCloudActors on the scene.
Improved rebuilding times of clouds.
Screen-size based LOD system replaced the curve-driven one. This should simplify the process, as well as increase visual quality and performance. NOTE: If you’re upgrading from previous versions, then any existing clouds will need to have their LOD options set again.
Support for LOD Coloration view mode. NOTE: Because the sprites are actually generated in the shader (which is being replaced by the view mode), the cloud will be rendered using points instead. UE4 only has visual indication of up to 8 LODs, any consecutive one will be rendered using the LOD7 color.
Improved sprite size adjustment mechanic. This should now produce much better visual quality while having the same or better performance.
Custom sprite texture and masks can now be selected via Rendering panel of the asset.
Option to override cloud colors using point’s height or position.
Custom materials can now access all rendering parameters set using Point Cloud Asset UI via MF_PointCloudParameters node.
If RGB mode is selected, Color property will now act as a tint instead of being ignored.
Low Precision mode now supports RGB colors using 5:6:5 depth.

Fixes

Material scanning has been removed and replaced with more robust approach. As a result, assigning and modifying custom materials should no longer risk crashes.
Several Blueprint tweaks and fixes

Other Changes

Explicit Solid Color rendering mode has been removed and replaced with default use of intensity channel (if available)
Explicit CustomMaterial render mode has been removed. Instead, the custom material will automatically be used as soon as it’s assigned (cloud rebuild required). To set custom material at runtime, simply call the SetCustomMaterial function, then *Rebuild *the cloud. To return to the default material call the function again with empty material.

anonymous_user_07ba773b · May 31, 2018, 6:58pm

Phenomenal work, looking forward to testing this out!

Derek_Hunter · June 1, 2018, 12:31pm

Excellent work. I’m downloading it now for testing!

Derek_Hunter · June 1, 2018, 1:37pm

V0.4 (4.18) crashes as soon as I hit play. This is with a point cloud that was working yesterday. Log file attached if that helps.

phoboz · June 1, 2018, 2:35pm

I’m sorry to hear that you are having issues. This is a strange crash location, haven’t seen this error before.

Some extra questions:

Is it working fine in the editor view?
Are you using Play-In-Editor or separate window?
Is the cloud statically loaded (imported into content browser, then dragged onto the scene) or are you loading it dynamically via code/bp?
Are you using custom material?
Did you change any PC settings from default?
Any other plugins enabled?
Can you reproduce the same effect in brand new project with the cloud imported fresh?

phoboz · June 2, 2018, 11:12am

Point Cloud Plugin v0.4.1
Release Notes

Fixes

PointCloudActor’s Dynamic Shadow is now properly exposed to Blueprints.
Few minor fixes to help with compilation under Linux.

Other Changes

Default Saturation set to 1.
Import settings slightly rearranged to only contain import-relevant properties.
Raised the minimum value of SectionSize from 400 to 1000 (when using auto detection).

Derek_Hunter · June 2, 2018, 12:31pm

Hi - thanks for the quick reply.

It works fine in the editor view.
It fails in PIE and separate window.
The cloud is statically loaded.
No custom material - I’m using “point, unlit, solid colour”.
No changes to default setting that I can think of.
I’ve got about six or seven other plugins enabled.
I have not tried it in a fresh project.

Based on what you said I will try the point-cloud plugin in a new project with all other plugins disabled and let you know what happens.

Derek_Hunter · June 2, 2018, 1:01pm

Anyway… here’s a nice shot of a point-cloud against a UE4 model of “The Barbican Conservatory” roof-top in London. St. Paul’s Cathedral just visible.

UE4 4.18
PointCloudPlugin V0.3.
Building modelled in Blender.
London topography from AccuCities (http://www.accucities.com/)

phoboz · June 2, 2018, 3:35pm

Is the crash happening on 0.4? You mentioned solid color render mode, which was removed in 0.4

Derek_Hunter · June 3, 2018, 9:23am

The crash is on 0.4.

You are right. I did say “solid colour render mode” but thinking about it now I’m 99% certain I was using the new render mode.

I will try on a new project today.

This from a customer who is using 0.3: “The Point Cloud is fantastic!”

phoboz · June 4, 2018, 11:04am

Happy to hear that

phoboz · June 5, 2018, 3:57pm

[USER=“436594”]Derek Hunter[/USER] Are you still experiencing crashes?

phoboz · June 6, 2018, 12:04pm

Point Cloud Plugin v0.4.2
Release Notes

Fixes

Fixed an issue with point clouds not loading at startup sometimes.
Changing Render Method at runtime should be much more robust now.