Scan Types (how to scan) 

  • Editor Viewport. Generates a point cloud, from your scene, as viewed from the editor, fully shaded, 1 point, per screen pixel, or more, with AA. This inserts a camera under  the lazpoint object, so that you may return to the viewpoint, as the scan was taken, at any time
  • Radial. This is a what a terrestrial scanner would do. It has a vertical spinning ray head, that rotates around an axis, from start angle, to end angle.
  • Inverse Radial. this shoots rays in reverse. From n outer sphere, back to the scanner, it is the inverse of radial. The sphere is as large as your scan range. 
  • Pole. A rotating head, that travels upwards, on a  virtual pole, radiating outwards from that pole or axis.
  • Inverse Pole.  A spinning head, who's rays begin where the pole rays would otherwise end. (Booth mode) Think of a tube, where the rays begin on the outer surface of the tube and radiate inwards to the center axis. Only one axis rotates, the other is fixed. The head steps up one unit after each spin of the head.
  • Grid. 2D grid of rays, shooting in the z direction of the LAZPoint object.


Sample Types (what is sampled, when a ray hits a surface)

  • Surface.Color.  When a ray hits a surface, color is sampled, without light.


  • Surface.Normal. Abs. the Absolute surface normal, as color.
  • Surface UVw.  return the UV coordinate of the hit point, as a color.
  • Ray.Phong.  surface normal  multiplied by scan ray.
  • Surface*Ray.Phong. apply phong to color, without light.




  • Scan Direction.  this inverts the direction of the scan. for example in radial mode, the default is YX. Scanning first in Y , then in X. this changes the order of the scanned points. (try this with spline output.)
  • Scan Range. The maximum range a ray is allowed to travel, regardless of hits.
  • Scan Depth.  The  maximum number of points a ray is allowed to generate. In real life, this would usually be one, as light bounces on first hit. But you can create amazing scans with value far above 1, effectively scanning every surface in a scene, from one origin point.
  • Size. defines the size the scan preview (in the viewport)
  • Resolution is a multiplier for the number of samples per circle(sweep), or axis. e.g. at 0 degrees in lon(X) there are 360 horizontal samples at 100% setting this to 200% gives you 720 samples. The rays generated are always evenly distributed creating a square pixel like 


  • These values let you limit the direction the scanner can scan. they are simply min/ max values.




  • Scanner info 
  • Pt (resolution) 
  • Mpts is the number of point that would be generate if every ray hit a surface, with a maximum depth of 1. the result can be higher. A real scanner does not  usually have a depth higher than 1. As this is physically not really going to happen with solid objects.
  • PtD is the size of a physical, horizontal step, in cm, at 10 meters, from the scanner.



Last but not least, the scan button !

you need to press this, to scan :) it then renders the the scene, and uses the ray-tracer to exactly simulate what a real scanner does. 

The scanner can only work with c4d render engines. if you have another renderer, you need to switch to c4d engine, before doing a scan.