For 2024 a Point Cloud Container object was added to the Voxygen 3 Package and further refined.
This new object makes it much easier for you to load and work specifically with lidar and pointclouds.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
About
This object should be used if you want to load lidar from laz,las,gltf,ply,etc (or some other supported formats).
You can load either a single cloud, or a collection of point clouds, from a folder.
The point cloud container lets you first load one or more files into a single container, so that you can initially manage the number of points you want to work with in the viewport. this is very useful if you have larger point clouds, as it gives you a way to quickly get something workable for viewing and rendering.
The Point Cloud container generates a point object and a Point colour tag(assuming your cloud has colour). You can connect it directly to the new particles introduced to 2024, and use it jut like any other point object as the source for any of c4d's tools, such as Volumes or mograph. It can be made editable at any time, and you will have a point object, and a point colour tag, and not plugin dependence.
Using the particle system in 2024, you can easily render pointclouds using Redshift, but there are many ways to work with points.
Properties
Object Size
After loading, you can set you working size. This is useful if your point cloud is super small or super large. You can change it to i.e. 10, to scale up by 10x or 0.1 to reduce the size.
View LOD
After loading your cloud into the container, you can easily change the number of visible points by adjusting this LOD setting. This helps you improve performance and is none destructive. The points that are hidden are not deleted.
Drop
This setting drops the points along the y axis so that the lowest point is at zero in the resulting object space.
Swap Axis
During the loading process, you can flip the axis. This is only currently possible during load, due to how the container caches the points into blocks when created.
Info
Some basic info on the number of points in the container, and and what is actually visible if LOD is less than 100
Notes
- if you do not have a license, you will be able to see the loaded data, but you will only be able to use 1% of that loaded data.
- The Gltf point point cloud loader uses c4d gltf geometry loader, but re-interprets the result specifically point clouds, producing much better results. There are many examples of gltf point clouds on sketchfab. i.e. the model below was download from sketchfab as a gtlf.
Example Data Links
Download the GlTF format files, unpack and load into a point cloud container.
https://sketchfab.com/3d-models/test-roundhouse-pointcloud-pixpro-e1dedc65c9d8458f8369d9c7871d1747
https://sketchfab.com/3d-models/avenida-paulista-4aa34e22718b48b79530dcb96fd8af56
https://sketchfab.com/3d-models/calgary-canada-9c104dc078cf473caa99e09a2d332102
for laz or las examples search for :
https://sketchfab.com/search?features=downloadable&q=pointcloud+laz&type=models
https://sketchfab.com/search?features=downloadable&q=point+cloud+laz&type=models
https://sketchfab.com/search?features=downloadable&q=point+cloud+las&type=models
https://sketchfab.com/3d-models/point-cloud-of-pine-forest-geology-c66f64a5dc6c47288f7cbe1592d88d08
etc, etc..
Most examples are free, some are paid. I have no affiliation with them any of them, and the links are just to show you where to easily source some test examples to try out with the demo.
Purchase and support
You can purchase Voxygen 3 from here : https://cinemaplugins.com/c4d-plugins/voxygen-3/
Support is for one year after purchase date.