read support for PLY files in LAStools

[Martin Isenburg]

Hello,

you can now read point clouds from PLY files in both ASCII and binary version. If the PLY file contains a mesh then only the vertices are read. A sample result is attached.

lasview -i cow.ply

This is available since the most recent version 180911 of LAStools.

http://rapidlasso.com/LAStools

If you have PLY files that do not load properly please let me know.

Regards.

Martin @rapidlasso

[Dominik Schneider]

Hi Martin,

I have some .ply files that don't seem to open properly. they are binary, from a Fraunhofer 3d scanner. I attached one for your reference.

https://drive.google.com/open?id=1z47ZOgnGEsed9DW_gHffr3z1zK01DNq1

I just downloaded lastools on friday (last change in CHANGES is 30 September 2018 )

thanks for the nice tools!

Dominik

[Martin Isenburg]

Hello,

yep. Thanks for this sample. This file has a "gray" value that I had not supported. I've mapped it into the intensity field for the time being. Will be supported in the next release. Does the attached image make sense?

Regards,

Martin

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[Dominik Schneider]

Yes that looks about right. Before I saw your post about supporting .ply I was using cloudcompare to convert from .ply to .las but lastools wasn't behaving well with the .las file. Would it makes sense that this gray value is the reason for the funky conversion too? I was getting all kind of warnings upon import with lastools about header inconsistencies regarding first returns.

Thanks, Dominik

[Martin Isenburg]

Hello,

if you need to convert this before the next release then try this pre-release:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/8ose8myru0y49jv/las2las.exe

You see how it operates below:

C:\software\LAStools\bin>las2las -i sensor0.ply -o sensor0.laz

parsed: format binary_little_endian 1.0

parsed: comment created by Fraunhofer IIS

parsed: element vertex 1629613

parsed: property float x

parsed: property float y

parsed: property float z

parsed: property uchar gray

not supported: element face 0

skipping remaining header ...

C:\software\LAStools\bin>lasinfo sensor0.laz

lasinfo (181001) report for 'sensor0.laz'

reporting all LAS header entries:

  file signature:             'LASF'

  file source ID:             0

  global_encoding:            0

  project ID GUID data 1-4:   00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000

  version major.minor:        1.2

  system identifier:          'LAStools (c) by rapidlasso GmbH'

  generating software:        'las2las (version 181001)'

  file creation day/year:     275/2018

  header size:                227

  offset to point data:       227

  number var. length records: 0

  point data format:          0

  point data record length:   20

  number of point records:    1629613

  number of points by return: 1629613 0 0 0 0

  scale factor x y z:         0.001 0.001 0.001

  offset x y z:               0 0 0

  min x y z:                  -67.727 143.662 111.148

  max x y z:                  97.735 370.778 183.847

LASzip compression (version 3.2r5 c2 50000): POINT10 2

reporting minimum and maximum for all LAS point record entries ...

  X              -67727      97735

  Y              143662     370778

  Z              111148     183847

  intensity          37        255

  return_number       1          1

  number_of_returns   1          1

  edge_of_flight_line 0          0

  scan_direction_flag 0          0

  classification      0          0

  scan_angle_rank     0          0

  user_data           0          0

  point_source_ID     0          0

number of first returns:        1629613

number of intermediate returns: 0

number of last returns:         1629613

number of single returns:       1629613

overview over number of returns of given pulse: 1629613 0 0 0 0 0 0

histogram of classification of points:

         1629613  never classified (0)