Potree — The Complete Guide: Viewing and Measuring Huge Point Clouds in the Browser
Potree is an open-source point cloud viewer (BSD-2-Clause licence) developed at TU Wien that runs in the browser. It smoothly displays scans of billions of points, and lets you share a scan of a site or building with clients and partners who have no dedicated software.
Potree
Markus Schütz / TU Wien
Browser viewing of huge LiDAR and scan point clouds, with distance, area, volume and height-profile measurements.
Get it from the vendorWhat you get
- Huge point clouds — billions of points with smooth display.
- Measurements — distances, areas and volumes.
- Height profiles — a profile along a line you draw.
- Clipping and annotations — hiding parts and marking points of interest.
- Several clouds together — showing several scans in one scene.
How to publish a scan
Before viewing, the point cloud is converted with the PotreeConverter tool, and the result is uploaded to a web server. From then on, anyone with the link can view and measure the scan in the browser. In other words, you need access to a server and a little technical work to set it up.
Related tools
For processing and cleaning the point cloud before publishing — PDAL or CloudCompare. For producing a point cloud from drone photos — WebODM.
PDAL
PDAL contributors (Hobu)
Point cloud processing pipelines for LiDAR — filter, classify, crop and convert LAS/LAZ, like GDAL for point clouds.
Get it from the vendor
CloudCompare
CloudCompare Project
Point cloud and laser scan processing — registration, cleaning, as-built comparison and measurement.
Get it from the vendor
WebODM (OpenDroneMap)
OpenDroneMap
Photogrammetry from drone imagery — orthophoto, elevation model, point cloud and textured 3D model.
Get it from the vendor
COLMAP
COLMAP developers (Johannes Schönberger)
Photogrammetry from photos — Structure-from-Motion and Multi-View Stereo to build 3D point clouds and models.
Get it from the vendorThe bottom line
Potree is a free way to turn a heavy scan into a link anyone can open. It is especially suited to sharing surveys and building documentation with people who do not work with point clouds.