Shrink wrap a LIDAR point cloud of a tree

by Sam Ammar

May 30, 2017

Hello-

I'm trying to shrink wrap a mesh around a point cloud generated by a laser scanner. Since it's a scan of trees/vegitation, the points are not just on the outer surface but all through the shape (see the example file).

I need to reproduce the general size, shape and locations of trees in an existing place, so I cannot just sketch in some trees. my output needs to be rough blobs approximating the shape of the tree or group of trees. I have run a MeshFromPoints on the clouds but that generates a random jumble of mesh faces.

What I 'll need is to be able to "tune" the shrink wrap's complexity/resolution.

I'm a complete GH newbie and I'm not looking for somebody to do the work for me but -

A) is there a grasshopper solution that gets me close

B) can you point me to some tutorials

C) process many of trees / stands of trees

I hope this describes the problem accurately.

  • up

    Hyungsoo Kim

    Hi.

    I'm not sure this is what you are after BTW,

    You can voxelize your ptcloud data by using "volvox" plug-in and subdivide & smooth by using "Weaverbird" plug-in.

    1

    May 30, 2017

    • up

      ng5 Alex

      Hello Sam,

      maybe this could help you.

      you need to install volvox and weaverbird to open file. Volvox lets you reference and edit point clouds in grasshopper and weaverbird is useful for meshes.

      voxel size sets the resolution of the blob(s) and smoothing comes after to have a smooth mesh describing your points.

      best

      alex

      edit

      well this post was unanswered with refresh, until i posted, when it turned out 5 minutes earlier Kim was there.

      1

      May 30, 2017

      • up

        Sam Ammar

        Excellent! 2 flavors of solution.

        May 30, 2017