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Overview

The module 6 of the course is dedicated to defining a WebGL-based visualisation of 3D georeferenced data using Potree.

Learning outcomes

Through a combination of theoric concepts and aa guided application, students will understands the basics of implementing a web platform for 3D data visualisation. In particular, they will be introuced to some basic concept of HTML, CSS and JS, setting up a web page that will visualise the 2022 pointcloud, allowing interactive exploration, measuring and cross-section extraction with simple clicks.

Table of contents

  1. Introduction: this section aims to provide an overview of the context of the tool used, describing its general features and references.

  2. Getting started: this step details how students need to navigate through the developing and testing environment for Potree, presenting the needed set up.

  3. 3D Viewer implementation: this section illustrates how to define the basic settings and input data for a simple pointcloud viewer with Potree, introducting also useful native elaboration features for the case study of the glacier.

  4. Customise the viewer: this part additionally guides students on how to implement additional useful features in Potree, such as georeferenced annotations and oriented images.

Software

The adopted tool for the practical sessions of this module is Potree: https://github.com/potree/potree

Potree is a free open-source WebGL based point cloud renderer for large point clouds, developed at the Institute of Computer Graphics and Algorithms, TU Wien, Austria.

Project details

  • The multi-res-octree algorithms used by the viewer were developed at the Vienna University of Technology by Michael Wimmer and Claus Scheiblauer as part of the Scanopy Project.

  • Three.js, the WebGL 3D rendering library on which potree is built.

  • plas.io point cloud viewer. LAS and LAZ support have been taken from the laslaz.js implementation of plas.io. Thanks to Uday Verma and Howard Butler for this!

  • Harvest4D Potree currently runs as Master Thesis under the Harvest4D Project

  • Christian Boucheny (EDL developer) and Daniel Girardeau-Montaut (CloudCompare). The EDL shader was adapted from the CloudCompare source code!