Merge terrestrial laser scans with photogrammetry

PIX4Dmapper PIX4Dmapper Feature Request
1

A welcome addition would be the ability to import a point cloud created from terrestrial laser scans, and then merge it with the point cloud created through photogrammetry, as can be done in Autodesk Recap Pro. And then create deliverables, mesh, orthomosaic, from that combined cloud.

2

Hi Bill, thanks for sharing your idea. It will be considered as part of the ongoing development of Pix4D’s products.

I trust you already know that Pix4Dmapper does not support deriving a 3D textured mesh from point clouds that are imported into a project. Unfortunately, I don’t have more information to share with you about your feature request.

If you have any other ideas that you think will improve Pix4D’s software, please let us know by voting for a thread that someone else started, or by starting your own thread if no one else has yet shared the idea.

3

Hi Bill, my understanding is you would like to merge two or more dense point clouds and then derive a 3D textured mesh from your images and the merged dense point cloud. In this context:

  • The dense point clouds may come from two or more sources, a Pix4Dmapper project, a terrestrial laser scan, or an aerial laser scan.
  • There is no guarantee that all of the dense point clouds will be accurate enough that they correspond with each other, therefore, you also anticipate you will want a tool that allows you to co-register the dense point clouds.
  • The 3D textured mesh is composed of a triangulated irregular network of triangles and an image that is draped or projected on top. The 3D textured mesh is not a triangulated irregular network that represents the geometry of the terrain or ground.

Please let me know if my understanding is incorrect.

4

Hi Andrew, thanks for the reply. Yes the idea is that the point clouds will come from say, a terrestrial laser scan pre-registered in 3rd party software, and a cloud derived through Pix4Ds normal photogrammetry process. Yes there is no guarantee of the quality of the two clouds you are trying to join, and I guess there will need to be some registration type tool that reports on the success of any attempted merge. Yes the idea is the result is a textured mesh of the kind currently produced by Pix4D as a standard deliverable.

5

Hi Bill,

Thanks for sharing the information.

I trust you understand that I don’t know when a tool or workflow that corresponds with what you described, but I assure you that your idea will be considered as part of the ongoing development of Pix4D’s products.

Thanks again.

6

Hey Bill,
If you have the same place or object taken by photogrammetry and laser scanner and it’s registered in the same coordinate system, why not generate the mesh from the point cloud of the scanner and apply the texture that you have processed by photogrammetry?

7

Thanks for the reply Joan.
A typical situation for us would be a building where the walls were captured with terrestrial laser scanner, and the roof with the drone. Our laser scanning software (Trimble Realworks) is not particularly good at creating meshes, which is why I would like to do it all in the photogrammetry software.
Can you suggest some software and a basic workflow to carry out the process you suggest?