imclab / pcx

Point cloud importer & renderer for Unity

Pcx - Point Cloud Importer/Renderer for Unity

Pcx is a custom importer and renderer that allows handling point cloud data in Unity.

System Requirements

• Unity 2017.3

Pcx uses the 32-bit vertex index format that is newly introduced in Unity 2017.3, so it's not compatible with the previous versions of Unity.

At the time this document is written, Unity 2017.3 is still in the beta testing phase. Note that it possibly introduces some issues with the final released version.

Supported Formats

Currently Pcx only supports PLY binary little-endian format.

Container Types

There are two types of container for point clouds.

Mesh

Points are to be contained in a Mesh object. They can be rendered with the standard MeshRenderer component. It's recommended to use the custom shaders included in Pcx (Point Cloud/Point and Point Cloud/Disk).

ComputeBuffer

Points are to be contained in a PointCloudData object, which uses ComputeBuffer to store point data. It can be rendered with using the PointCloudRenderer component.

There are no significant performance difference between these two container types. The ComputeBuffer type is just convenient for animating points with using compute shaders.

Rendering Methods

There are two types of rendering methods in Pcx.

Point (point primitives)

Points are rendered as point primitives when using the Point Cloud/Point shader.

The size of points can be adjusted by the material properties.

These size properties are only supported on some platforms; It may work with OpenGLCore and Metal, but never work with D3D11/12.

This methods is also used when the point size is set to zero in PointCloudRenderer.

Disk (geometry shader)

Points are rendered as small disks when using the Point Cloud/Disk shader or PointCloudRenderer.

This method requires geometry shader support.

Acknowledgements

The point cloud files used in the examples (screenshots in this document) are created by Thomas Flynn. These files are licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution license (CC BY 4.0). Please see the following original pages for further details.

• richmond-azaelias.ply - Azaleas, Isabella Plantation, Richmond Park, https://sketchfab.com/models/188576acfe89480f90c38d9df9a4b19a

• anthidium-forcipatum.ply - Anthidium forcipatum ♀ (Point Cloud), https://sketchfab.com/models/3493da15a8db4f34929fc38d9d0fcb2c

License

MIT