From the start of this week John Gentle gave me the task to test various open source software capable of visualizing 3-D images. But out of the various applications these are the most promising ones with the capabilities I have found, along with flaws towards my use. Due to how LIDAR files have a tendency to be large in size I have picked out a couple utilities that have proven to be capable to open these files. However, only one select application called CloudCompare has been capable to open and be useful in the grand scheme of the project. However, some of the other applications I tested throughout the week are; Paraview, Meshlab, Blender, VisIt, Grass, and QGIS.
Since LIDAR is effectively a point cloud, it has no concept of a “mesh” structure. When you generate a .STL from the point cloud data you get polygons that are simply “connecting the dots” between the outermost points in the LIDAR data. This may work in some cases, but in many cases the point cloud data will need to be manipulated to produce the mesh that is actually desired for printing as an STL. This is unavoidably a “human in the loop” process as the desired mesh is a very subjective thing. The good news is John and I have a solution working and we are digging into CloudCompare. The solution works on desktops so far, but the HPC build has issues. It says it is missing libraries to convert .las (LIDAR) into the mesh to form the .stl. Additionally, ParaView *can* support PC data and manage the STL generation, but we have had no luck using the app without it crashing on us (on desktop or on HPC) with las files. An upside is it can do quite a large number of things related to automating workflows via a python trace library that captures your steps and allows you to effectively script the process. You can use a lowers model to define the workflow then apply it to a high-res model repeatedly. This would be the ideal solution for us IF we can get it to work properly.
Along this week we had a Visualization Training session on Friday, this was a brief introduction into computational visualizations into our poster using python codes. Also during the training period, Dr. Anne Bowen helped me with installing and familiarizing me with TACC Visualization Portal for Maverick using VNC viewer. She also guided me into compiling Meshlab and showing how to open Paraview on Maverick and Stampede. However when we went to build CloudCompare it was not until later in the day till Anne was able to figure out how to build it. But even using Maverick, we still have problems with Paraview crashing and then CloudCompare is missing a library.
Since LIDAR is effectively a point cloud, it has no concept of a “mesh” structure. When you generate a .STL from the point cloud data you get polygons that are simply “connecting the dots” between the outermost points in the LIDAR data. This may work in some cases, but in many cases the point cloud data will need to be manipulated to produce the mesh that is actually desired for printing as an STL. This is unavoidably a “human in the loop” process as the desired mesh is a very subjective thing. The good news is John and I have a solution working and we are digging into CloudCompare. The solution works on desktops so far, but the HPC build has issues. It says it is missing libraries to convert .las (LIDAR) into the mesh to form the .stl. Additionally, ParaView *can* support PC data and manage the STL generation, but we have had no luck using the app without it crashing on us (on desktop or on HPC) with las files. An upside is it can do quite a large number of things related to automating workflows via a python trace library that captures your steps and allows you to effectively script the process. You can use a lowers model to define the workflow then apply it to a high-res model repeatedly. This would be the ideal solution for us IF we can get it to work properly.
Along this week we had a Visualization Training session on Friday, this was a brief introduction into computational visualizations into our poster using python codes. Also during the training period, Dr. Anne Bowen helped me with installing and familiarizing me with TACC Visualization Portal for Maverick using VNC viewer. She also guided me into compiling Meshlab and showing how to open Paraview on Maverick and Stampede. However when we went to build CloudCompare it was not until later in the day till Anne was able to figure out how to build it. But even using Maverick, we still have problems with Paraview crashing and then CloudCompare is missing a library.