New version of CloudCompare released...

Deformation Analysis Software for 3D Point Cloud Data eg CloudCompare
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Jason Warren
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New version of CloudCompare released...

Post by Jason Warren »

Dear CloudCompare enthusiasts,

A new version has been released. You'll find it here:
http://www.danielgm.net/cc/

The corresponding github tag is https://github.com/cloudcompare/trunk/r ... tag/v2.5.4
Once again, many thanks to all our supporters who made donations on pledgie!

________________________________________

First, a special thank to WOWWW! (a dutch company of open source developers mainly focused on drupal) who kindly transferred the cloudcompare.org and cloudcompare.net domain names to our project.

You can update your bookmarks right away!

And another special thank to Dimitri Lague (Geosciences Rennes) for releasing two great plugins based on his recent works:
- qCANUPO: for automatic classification of point clouds:
1.jpg

See the documentation here: http://www.cloudcompare.org/doc/wiki/in ... uginCANUPO
- qM3C2: to compute signed distances (with an associated confidence) directly between point clouds
2.jpg
See the documentation here: http://www.cloudcompare.org/doc/wiki/in ... PluginM3C2

Note that both plugins are only available on Windows for the moment (+ their source code is not yet public)

________________________________________
Otherwise the 2.5.4 version will be (hopefully) an even more stable version with lots of small improvements and bug fixes:
- New file formats supported:
- OFF meshes
- PTX clouds (import only for now - and normal computation still needs to be improved)
- New method: 'Edit > Colors > Interpolate from another entity'
- set the colors of a cloud (or mesh vertices) by interpolating the colors of another cloud (or mesh vertices)
- for now the only available interpolation mode consists in taking the nearest neighbor's color
3.jpg
- New method: 'Tools > Fit > 2D1/2 Quadric'
fits a 2D1/2 quadric on the selected cloud(s)
the quadric is represented as a 'primitive' (kind of mesh with a customizable resolution) and its equation is displayed in the console
4.jpg
- Enhancements:
- Thanks to Andy, the MacOS version now supports GDAL:
- all kind of raster formats can be loaded
- geotiff raster files can be generated with the 'Tools > Projection > Rasterize' tool
- 'Sensor' framework upgraded:
- Camera 'projective' sensors added (early support)
- 'View from sensor' method added
- STL import filter is smarter: collapsed triangle after vertex fusion are now automatically removed
- Global shift management:
- a new button 'use last' will now appear on the 'Global shift/scale' dialog that popups when loading a file with very big coordinates (for the current session only - the button will appear when the dialog has been "accepted" at least once before)
- the Z coordinate (if small) is not shifted by default anymore
- shift/scale information should be (more) properly handled by both the Point pair-based and ICP registration tools
5.jpg
- The console visibility is now forced when a warning message is generated
- The 'Point-pair based align' tool keeps the activated GL filter (if any)
- Normal vectors can now be converted to two scalar fields:
- 'dip' and 'dip direction' (see wikipedia - the north is assumed to be +Y, and the altitude is +Z)
- this new method is now in a common sub-menu with the "conversion to HSV" method (in 'Edit > Normals > Convert to')
6.jpg
- The way the 'roughness' parameter is computed ('Tools > Other > Roughness') has been slightly modified:
- for each point, the best fit plane is computed on all the neighbors except the point itself (this gives a less biased measure). The roughness value is then computed as before (i.e. as the distance between the point and this plane).
- New 'sand box' method: "Export cloud(s) info":
- exports various pieces of information for all selected clouds in a CSV file (cloud name, size, mean, std.dev. and sum of all scalar fields, etc.)
- 'Camera link' feature enhanced:
- modification of the global zoom (magnifier icon) is now propagated
- modification of the rotation center is now propagated
- 'Command line' mode enhanced:
- loaded clouds and meshes can be now saved anytime with the '-SAVE_CLOUDS' and '-SAVE_MESHES' options (this is not necessary by default as all modified or newly created entities are automatically saved, but it can be useful for performing format conversion through the command line)
- ASCII files with less than 6 columns are now loaded silently (i.e. no dialog should pop-up)
- new option '-CROP2D' to crop a cloud inside a 2D polygon (either in the XY, XZ or YZ planes)
- (see the wiki for all available options)
- The 'Subsample' method can now be called on multiple clouds at once
- 'Cross Section' tool:
- contour extraction parametrization is much more clever (for both 'single' and 'multiple' contour extraction modes)
- the extraction with a rotated clipping box is now properly handled (was bugged before)
- Bug fixes:
- Information displayed in 2D labels was 'shifted' ( 'P(index,x,y)' was displayed instead of 'P(x,y,z)')
- Depending on the selection order, CC could crash when merging two clouds (one with normals and the other without)
- A too big step (causing a 1x1 cell grid) would make the Rasterize tool crash!
- When scaling a cloud (with 'Edit > Apply scale') the 'global scale' information was (wrongly) updated. Therefore the cloud was rescaled to its original state at export time!
- EDL / SSAO filters were performing badly on entities not centered on Z=0 (OpenGL Z-buffer was badly initialized in ortho. mode)
- When GL filters were enabled, labels text or the color ramp title were shifted in the Y direction
- Command Line mode:
- when loading a BIN file with multiple clouds inside, only the first one was kept!
- when saving multiple clouds coming from the same file, all files had the same name (and were therefore overwritten)
- Gaussian curvature formula was wrong (missing square exponent)
- Several memory leaks have been fixed (2D1/2 mesh triangulation, etc.)
> Cloning a mesh which was a child of its vertices would cause the duplication of the mesh structure in the resulting entity
________________________________________
You'll also find the new ccViewer versions here:

- same as of CloudCompare (see above)

And last but not least, you can make donations to the project via'Pledgie':

Enjoy,

CloudCompare Admin
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Jason Warren
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Re: New version of CloudCompare released...

Post by wgrimes »

This is fantastic. Can't wait to try some of the new features. CloudCompare is a major part of our workflow in cleaning up point clouds before showing to our clients.

Thanks for a great tool.

Wes
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Re: New version of CloudCompare released...

Post by hypsometric »

Cloudcompare is an amazing tool... Thank you EU laws! And especially Daniel for giving it life and maintaining /updating it more than any other software product in our industry. But one of my concerns has always been the licensing. Last time I checked it was designated for non-commercial use... I could be wrong. Or maybe that was the source code... Either way if it had out-of-core point handling there would little reason to use any other kit after registration was completed.
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Re: New version of CloudCompare released...

Post by jedfrechette »

hypsometric wrote:Last time I checked it was designated for non-commercial use... I could be wrong.
Fortunately you are wrong. CloudCompare is licensed under the GPL version 2 [1]. The GPL explicitly prohibits the addition of additional clauses such as 'no commercial use' [2]. CloudCompare is Free Software in every sense of the the word.

CloudCompare is really turning in to a solid piece of software with a lot of tools you can't find anywhere else and I hope it continues to gain traction. Right now we are evaluating spending some development resources on UI improvements for it that would make it more feasible to integrate in to our pipeline. Given the high cost and lack of features that we need in commercial packages, for once the old software adage about it being cheaper to buy than to build might be wrong.

[1] https://github.com/cloudcompare/trunk/b ... icense.txt
[2] https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#NoMilitary
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Re: New version of CloudCompare released...

Post by hypsometric »

Glad im wrong! Then why has Daniel have $812 dollars in donations so far! That can't even buy you a renew on any existing pointcloud software license!
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Re: New version of CloudCompare released...

Post by danielgm »

Thanks Guys!

Indeed I can't recall of any 'non-commercial use' statement in our license/documentation (but I might be wrong). As Jed pointed out the only limitation is relative to the GPL license. And by the way it doesn't prevent a commercial software from using our code... as long as its own code is made publicly available :D.

What the 812$ in donations hide is that some companies and public institutions have directly or indirectly financed this project for many years now. The first of them being EDF (http://www.edf.com/the-edf-group-42667.html). They have an amazing Research & Development division with brilliant engineers (I'm sure the radioactivity has something to do with it). They now play with clouds of 1000 stations and 50 billion points... (not with CloudCompare ;) - well at least not until we have out-of-core point handling indeed!).

And since I had the opportunity to work part time on CloudCompare as an independent developer (for about 18 months now) the project is evolving much more rapidly. The "funny" thing is that it was supposed to prevent me from working at night and on weekends...
Daniel
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Re: New version of CloudCompare released...

Post by 3DForensics »

Great work Daniel. It's a wonderful contribution you are making to the group.

Eugene
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Re: New version of CloudCompare released...

Post by Mike Annear »

Thanks again Daniel,
I just tried the PTX import...works perfectly.
We also ran the qCANUPO filter over a few Riegl data sets, it works much better than the one in RiScan Pro !
Regards,
Mike.
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Re: New version of CloudCompare released...

Post by Mike Annear »

Some further investigation...
CC can easily digest a 5 gig PTX file, compute normals, and spit it out in a variety of formats.
I don't know of any other free software package that can do this.
The polyline section extraction tools are also excellent.
Daniel, if you add a good meshing tool to this package it will be a giant killer.
I hope Leica, Faro, Trimble, Bentley, Riegl are taking note of your rapid progress !
It makes me wonder why we pay so much for our existing annual CCP/software subscriptions when the "feature updates" are so slow in comparison.
Keep up the good work !

Cheers,
Mike.
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Re: New version of CloudCompare released...

Post by Matt Young »

I have just installed CC a few days ago and I must say I am thinking the same thing.
If you don't see that there is nothing, then you are kidding yourself.
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