No point cloud shown in the Maya 2014 viewport

[Jason Huang]

Hi John and all,

I have a LIDAR scan data acquired through Faro and exported as .xyz file. Trying to visualize it in Maya to facilitate the set reconstruction process along with meshed geometry later on.
After the installation, I successfully load the Partio plug-in from Plug-in manager with no error message and is a Partio shelf added.

Created a PartioViz node and specified the path to a sample .xyz file, but nothing showed up in the viewport? I loaded the same .xyz file into MeshLab, and it showed up correctly. I have tried with couple more .xyz files with Partio, but still nothing I can see in Maya's viewport.

Environment: Maya 2014, Win 7 x64, Partio 0.9.6 release.

Thanks.

[John Cassella]

Hey Jason, by default  partio is  much happier to be reading sequences,

so in your case  rename the file  scissorsHandlePoints.0001.xyz

and turn on  static cache  and things should  work. 

Also,  you might consider converting the .xyz files to  something like .bgeo or  .prt  as a secondary step

coming from the  faro software

on the command line, you can use the partioConv   command 

partioConv    scissorsHandlePoints.0001.xyz  scissorsHandlePoints.0001.prt  
and then you will have a binary compressed  cache file that will load  much faster.

let me know if you have any other problems.

-johnc

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[Jason Huang]

Thanks, John. Renaming the .xyz file as you mentioned works for the sample scissor file, but not for any of the actual Faro export I have from our LIDAR guy.
I have tried the same treatment (renaming ans static cache checked) on each of the three different point density .xyz file of the actual set LIDAR scan, but no point cloud particles showed up in Maya's viewport. They all took a while in Maya to chew through, but nothing shows up at the end.

These files are cached and displayed correctly through PFTrack's Survey Solve node though.

- Jason

[ytsejam1976]

Hi Jason. Like John mentioned, you need to set, on parito viz, "static cache" On

Hey John. I know you are litterally busy., but no news on new partIO for maya 2015 yet?
Good job

Dario

[Jason Huang]

Hi Dario, I do have the static cache checked before I specify the file path. Somehow after the file is loaded the tick "disappeared".

Nevertheless, non of my actual LIDAR set data was successfully loaded into Maya via Partio but all of them are able to be cached into PFTrack's survey solver node.
I am wondering if there is something during the export process that write out XYZ and RGB data that cause Partio unable to recognize it. It takes quite a while for Partio to parse through my LIDAR data but after that it's empty in Maya's viewport.

[John Cassella]

Hi,  the best way to make sure things are working for you is to open up the file of the scissor handles that worked for you,  and look at it.  

then compare it to the file  that is not working.   

XYZ  file formats are usually  just  ascii data  files,   space delimited

and quite simple.. often with  minimal or no header info.

The file should look something like this...

2304340  
0.00000000 0.00000 5.3244  1.5235 254 254 254

and tons more lines like the one above

basically  the first line is  the number of points in the file

and each line after that is   made up of   a series of numbers  which are

the X,Y,Z position,  then usually some optional number for the  reflectance

and then the  RGB value usually either in  255 color space or  floating point values.

the reflectance and  rgb are optional.. and the partio reader should work down to just the  3 values of the position.

check to see if the format is the same in the file that doesn't work, and also look to see if the numbers its spitting out for position  make sense.. and are not  out of your current view and world scale... sometimes  if the scanner is  recording things in  MM or CM scale, the  position numbers could come in in very large values,  so you should try to scale down the  partio node or increase your  far clip plane on the  camera until you see something.  

if partio is  taking its time chewing on the point data, there should be something its generating.. it also spews out  how many points its loading to the  script editor.. check there to see if  its reading  points as you expect.

if all else fails..  try running the command line  tools  for partio    partInfo  will  try to read the file and  spit out its format if its readable by partio,  and  show you the first 10 lines of  data.. 

as long as it reads there, it should work in maya...  

and again.. if you can get it to load command line,  you can try to convert to  another binary format like bgeo or  PRT so things will load faster as well.

let me know if you have any luck.   if not , send me a sample of the data if you can and I can take a look at it.

-johnc

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[Jason Huang]

Hi John,

The data contains 6 columns: XYZ and RGB (in floating). PartioVisualizer takes a while to chew it through but in the script editor it doesn't give me the number of particles it loads.

Base on your suggestion and the sample scissor data, I grab a lower-rez scan data (exported from PolyWorks) that is size-wise open-able in a text editor and manually added a column (between the Z and Red info) to fake the reflectance value for 10+ points. Partio then loads these points in Maya correctly. (Script editor correctly shows the number of particles PartioVisualizer loads). I assume the reason Partio fails to read my data is because it reads the Red column as the Reflectance??

I am not sure how PFTrack interprets the data when the reflectance column doesn't exist but it does cache in the full scan with RGB color info.

I am not aware of any text editor capable of editing in the fake reflectance column for the 8GB XYZ file and waiting for LIDAR guy to re-export with the reflectance info. If there is a way to tell Partio to skip reading the reflectance column or just treat 6-column data as XYZRGB, it will be fantastic.

cheers,
Jason

[Jason Huang]

Finally able to correctly load the actual LIDAR data into Maya's viewport. Thanks again for the pointer of using the command line tool to test out a data.
Thanks again John!

[John Cassella]

Glad you finally got it working  Jason,   let me know what you had to do to get it working,and what the ultimate problem was,  If its something I could add better error checking for or something in the  code then  I should/could do that in the future.

-john

[Jason Huang]

Hi John,

The data I got previously from our LIDAR guys that doesn't work was like: (partinfo can't output the first 10 points position)
-1.061576 0.361586 -3.150477 -0.125616 -0.441186 1.655707

whereas this time I got the color as in 8-bit color space like below:
5.647204 5.262997 -1.567075 136 143 141

The command was then able to read out the first 10 points and I also got it to load up in Maya's viewport with correct color representation.

Is there a size limitation on the LIDAR .xyz file for Partio to load in Maya? The full-rez LIDAR .xyz is about 8GB. The command line partinfo can read out the first 10 points, but I can't get it to even start parsing in Maya. Maya didn't hang for processing like it did when correctly processing the 1GB low-rez scan data.

- Jason

[John Cassella]

I would use  partconv  to  convert from  .xyz to  bgeo or prt  format that will at least cut your file size down considerably when loading into maya.  8GB file is  pretty huge for  ascii.  and it will take  a  TON of time to convert  or load into maya for sure.   at least try converting first. so maya has a better chance of working.

-j

[Jason Huang]

Thanks John. I will give partconv a shot....I was wondering why the PartioVisualizer didn't even start parsing the 8GB data. If it's too big, it may try to load it and fail to crash or hang forever? When I  tried to load the 8GB file, it seems PartioVIsualizer instantly ignore it.

Also, how can I make the .xyz file an actual particle object that I can select and snap to for low-poly set reconstruction? Is it done through Partio Emitter or there are several steps I need to take to convert the .xyz data into particle/nParticel object?

Thanks.

[John Cassella]

Hey Jason,   8gb of points  my guess is over a couple million  points,   as  a particle system in maya will probably be almost unusable for modeling purposes.   If you're trying to make meshes from a lidar scan,  I would suggest  skipping the partio/maya side entirely and look into   an open source  program called meshLab which  can mesh   lidar points in various ways and has support to load   OBJ   PLY and  PTX file formats..

There are several other people asking for the same type of thing, using partio  but maya is just not  built to handle that kind of  data   and keep things interactive.  

If you wanted to try, yes  make a partioEmitter  emit a single frame and  set initial state on the particles.  then you can delete the emitter.

The partioImport command would be another option  but its REALLY slow.

it was a quick hack for someone  a long time ago, so  it probably needs some optimization.

anyway,  good luck and let me know how things go.

-johnc

[Jason Huang]

Hey John,

Yeah, the full-rez .xyz file (actually 6.4GB) is too large to handle. After I successfully convert it to .prt (2.3GB), I am able to load it in Maya, but like you said it is REALLY slow to navigate. I will stick with the one that is about 30 million points (1.2GB in .xyz; 456MB in .prt).

For meshing, I was aware of that we need to mesh the point externally (like in PolyWorks, GeoMagic, MeshLab, etc.), but I was hoping to be able to start reconstruct a low-poly set env in Maya just using the 30 million points that Maya and Partio can handle, before receiving the full-blown meshed set geo.

Sorry for my ignorance on Maya's particle system. In a new Maya scene, I created a Partio Emitter, pointed the 30 million .prt file, Cache Active ticked, but then couldn't figure out how to actually "emit' the particles for 1 frame. Would you mind be a bit more specific on the steps?

Thanks.

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[John Cassella]

You have to make a particle object   (just do create emitter, and  then delete the  emitter.) 

then connect the partio emitter to the  particle in the dynamic relationships editor..

set the start frame of the particles to one frame before   the start frame of your  lidar scan most likely   0 if your prt file is numbered  0001.prt, 
rewind your timeline  to frame 0   and step forward by a frame.

it should emit and take  a very long time, to do so.   30 mil particles  is a very large amount for maya to handle, and as I said. it will end up being  pretty much useless honestly,  unless you happen to have a totally ridiculous  beast of a machine.   It may not even finish the emit before crashing out.

good luck.  :-)

Meshlab has   poly reduction tools/filters  you can apply  to the  main meshed data,   you should  check those out instead it does a really good job and its what we use all the time to generate  lidar geo.

-j

[Jason Huang]

Hi John,

Thank you for the instruction. I used a small chunk of the LIDAR data to test it out and successfully emitted the particles.

For the test data, Partio emitted 199787 particles (2.8MB .prt file). I already felt the the slowness in Maya 2014's default viewport. I couldn't imagine how slow it would be with the full set data (30 mill particles). I tried with nParticles, and it's a bit slow too for viewport navigation and locator/vertex snapping.

Do you think it will be faster with viewport 2.0 in Maya 2015? (Partio isn't compatible with Maya 2015, is it?)

I will try meshing the LIDAR points in MeshLab as you recommended. I didn't push it the first place because A) I wanted to exhaust the possibility of low-poly modeling with PartioViz and PartioEmitter in Maya, and B) I tried to load a high-rez LIDAR data (160 mill points-ish) in MeshLab and it failed.

So far the medium-rez data (30 mill points) is work-able in MeshLab. I feel more confident hearing MeshLab is cutting for Luma for production stuff.

Thanks,
Jason

[John Cassella]

Yeah,  we use Meshlab all the time. 

as for 2015 and  viewport 2.0.. I haven't gotten that part working yet for partioVisualizer.

I do have  partio4Maya compiled for 2015, just haven't had time to  make a full release of it yet.   but I am hoping to do that soon..

maya's particles are sped up with  viewport 2.0.so its possible  that you could try emitting  particles in 2014.. saving initial state and  then loading that file back up in 2015  and  you could see how much faster 2015 would be for  snap-modeling .. but  again its still the data structure underneath the viewport that is also slow  so it may end up not being what you need.

I'll post up stuff for 2015 as soon as I can  get to it.. :-) 

-j

[ytsejam1976]

Hi john, any news on partIO for maya 2015 and viewport 2.0 supports?

Thanks
Dario

[John Cassella]

Working on it, stay tuned.   we have it working at work, I just need to get  it merged into my repo and  get some  compiles going. 

I am going to unfortunately  not be able to  support  OSX compiles at the moment.  but will probably be able to do  Linux and Win still.

-john.