Point Clouds and Rhino
Point Clouds are a special collection of normal Rhino Point objects. They can be manipulated to a degree like normal point objects.
Importing
Import point clouds as a .ply or .e57 file.
You may clean and mesh point clouds within Rhino, but you cannot easily align or affect any scalar field attributes. It is recommended that you do the main processing from a software like CloudCompare.
Working with Point Clouds
Selections
If you select a point cloud object, it will select all the points in that selection no matter what selection tool you use.
You can make a sub-selection of points by Shift + Ctrl + Selecting (Click or Drag a Marquee)
Going Between Points & Clouds
By using [Explode] a Point Cloud object, it will convert it into individual Points, allowing you to use [Lasso] for finer selections. However this is not recommended with large point clouds.
Point Clouds can be reconstituted, or created in general from points, with the [PointCloud] command.
Subsampling
If the Point Cloud is too heavy for interaction; reduce the point cloud using the [ReducePointCloud] command. It has options for reduce by number or percentage.
Display
Point clouds can be viewed in Shaded and Rendered display modes.
To change the display size of points: Options - View – Display Modes – Shaded/Rendered – Object – Point.
Meshing
Use the [Shrinkwrap] command - this will 'inflate' each point as if it were a boolean, giving you a thick surface, or a closed mesh. Due to this inflation, the resulting mesh will be offset from the original point cloud by the radius of the inflation - counteract this using [OffsetMesh] by the same radius. This method loses accuracy for sparser point clouds.
Render
Point Clouds will only interact properly with light if using some external renderers like V-Ray. By default, Point Clouds will not be lit, but you can still use the following concepts to image generation.
The following images are shown using V-Ray. You can add light objects, like the sun, to light/shade the point cloud.
Clipping Planes
Use the [ClippingPlane] command to produce plans, sections, elevations.
Adding Assets
Point Clouds will interact as expected with other objects, like those imported from asset libraries (Chaos Cosmos, etc.)
Overexposed areas in the scan can be corrected by lowering the highlight and exposure through the Layer Adjustment controls in V-Ray. (In Frame Buffer window)
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