3D Point Cloud and Mesh Visualizer (PLY, ...)

This extension visualizes:

• Point Clouds in the formats: ASCII and binary ply files, xyz, xyzn, xyzrgb, pcd, pts and npy
• Meshes in the formats: ASCII and binary ply files, pbj, stl, off and gltf/glb
• Depth and disparity images are transformed on the fly to point clouds for the formats: tiff, png, pfm, npy and npz

Frequently new features will be added. You can simply request features that support your workflow or new file formats on github.

Features

Interpret depth/disparity images as point cloud.

Load two point clouds and switch between them imediatly pressing shift and click

• Compare Multiple Point Clouds: Multiple point clouds can be loaded in the same view and activated and deactivated independently
• Fast Loading of Big Point Clouds: Even point clouds with 5 Million Points load in around a second
• Rotation of points: Apply Rotation Matrix for single point clouds
• Depth to point cloud settings: Allow setting the fx, fy, cx, cy, different camera disturbance models, mono depth scale and bias parameter, png int16 scale parameter, disparity offset ...
• Pose estimations: Currently in development is support for 3d pose estimations in json files
• Buttons for meshes: Easily active wireframe, mesh, points and normals
• Corresponding website: All features can be also used without VS Code using the static website https://f-kleinicke.de
• Frame rate visualization: Shows the current frame rate. When point cloud is not moved, no more frames will be generated to save power, also ignores transparencies by default to save power
• Measure distance: Shift double click measures the distance between the rotation center and the selected point

Roadmap

• Wrong direction of Rotation: When rotating the point cloud the direction is inverted. It's unclear how to fix this.
• Add eye dome lighting: Improve perception of uncolored point clouds
• Drag and Drop: Add more pc to a given pc using drag and drop instead of adding them in an extra window
• Add new file formats: Body pose json files for 3d body pose, FBX files can contain meshes or animations, Exr files can contain float depth images or complete point clouds, gaussian splats
• Dataset support: Add images from Middlebury stereo and Eth3d as example images
• Automatic usage of calibration files: extrinsics/intrinsics files next to the depth images can contain all required parameter for a depth to pc conversion. Automatically use those for depth images for intrinsics and extrinsics for point clouds
• Crashes for too many points After loading multiple point clouds also in multiple files in parallel it crashes, rendering all views with this extension gray.

Feature Requests and Issues

If you have use cases that would be helpful for others or find problems, feel free to suggest them on the GitHub repository. If you know how to fix bugs or how to implement certain features, feel free to contribute. If you provide an example file, I can implement support for it in the extension.

Required structures of certain file formats

npy files:

• As depth image: [X,Y]
• As point cloud: [...,3] with the 3 values X,Y,Z