Point Cloud Visualizer 3.0 Documentation

Convert points to native Blender Mesh datablock type. Converted points are then part of blend file and can be used like any other native Blender data. Colors, normals and scalars are always preserved. Conversion results are renderable with Cycles, Eevee and other render engines.

Added new Mesh object will have Geometry Nodes modifier that will instance selected primitive (Point, Equilateral Triangle, Quad, Tetrahedron, Cube, Ico Sphere and Custom Mesh) on mesh vertices. Simple material using color attribute from point colors will ba added to mesh.

Instance size and instance type can be later changed on Geometry Nodes modifier. To use scalar field as colors, edit material to use different attribute.

Convert points to VDB file. Set path where VDB will be saved. Operator will then add volume using exported file to scene.

Experimental

Converts result PLY files from 3D Gaussian Splatting for Real-Time Radiance Field Rendering to something Blender renderable, keep in mind that this training software has its own terms of use. License of the original paper implementation says the official training software for the 3D Gaussian Splatting may be used "non-commercially", i.e., for research and/or evaluation purposes only. Commercial usage requires getting license from INRIA. PCV only reads user supplied 3D Gaussian Splatting PLY files and interpret their data in Blender context. You need to consider how did you get your 3D Gaussian Splatting PLY files.

Please, take it as a very experimental feature, more like exploring what blender can do or not.

Spherical harmonics formulas used in material nodetree are taken from UnityGaussianSplatting.

There are 4 approaches so far: points, octagons, spheres and sphere instances with volume. each have some advantages and each has problems, none is ideal.

• Point - Point primitive, splat rotation and scale does not apply
• Octagon - Flat polygon primitive, lighter meshes, texture gradient falloff, lack of third dimension makes result look too sparse, by default has doubled size to counter that
• Sphere - UV sphere primitive, better shape representation, bad gradient falloff due to available surface material possibilities
• Volumetric Sphere - Instanced UV sphere primitive, volumetric material, very slow to render, volume density does not translate that well

Increasing Properties > Render Properties > Light Paths > Transparent will get rid of weird opaque patches in render.

Experimental

Convert to native Blender Pointcloud object. Pointcloud object is unfinished Blender feature. It is only available in official alpha builds.