OpenVDB LIDAR

Fri Sep 04, 2015 2:03 am

Finally my work and my hobby have come together.

I thought that LIDAR data and OpenVDB would work well together so I have been working on creating a conversion program for it. This is some initial output from the program of an area near Matsu Alaska that we have some LIDAR data from. The program converts the LIDAR point cloud to a OpenVDB level set. I then use OpenVBD's functions to mesh the set and output to a .obj file. I then just brought the obj into Blender and used Cycles to render it out. I thought it came out better than I was expecting, although still a lot of work to do.

matsu-test2.png

matsu-test3.png

Fri Sep 04, 2015 2:10 am

This, I like a lot.

Fri Sep 04, 2015 4:12 am

Thanks Mist, I still have a way to go and I'm still not sure if it will be worth it. It's still fun though.

Beppe OctaneRender™ Italia Blue Sky · Fri Sep 04, 2015 7:53 am

Wow

Well done grimm, can't wait to see more experiments from you

ciao beppe

Fri Sep 04, 2015 8:02 am

Great work!

What is the size of the obj file?

Fri Sep 04, 2015 6:26 pm

Thanks guys, the obj file is about 533 Mbytes in size, although I'm going to try and pare that down a bit. All total over 10 million polys.

I would have used Octane to render it, but the GPU in my work computer is not very good, and probably wouldn't have been able to handle it (650ti).

Fri Sep 04, 2015 7:00 pm

Zremesher in zbrush does great job in reducing poly count. I used it and reprojected details to a higher sub div level, then export details as displacement.

Fri Sep 04, 2015 7:07 pm

Grimm,

I am at lidar website and trying to get data of a terrain of any desired city. Which data set (screenshot) did you choose for you model?

PS. This is a kick ass website. Thanks so much for sharing!

Fri Sep 04, 2015 8:01 pm

Thanks smicha, that is a cool site. I actually got the data from a site we (GINA) made for the Matsu LIDAR project here:

http://matsu.gina.alaska.edu/

Zremesher would be a good idea but I have to deal with those science types who want the data to be as exact as they can get it. So no shortcuts unfortunetely.

OpenVDB processes everything as a volume so it wants to create polys on all sides, where in this case we probably only really need the top polys. That should free up a good chunk of them right there. I'm still studing OpenVDB so maybe there is an option in it for doing this?

I also need to be able to tie the dataset to a real world projection and also be able to reproject the grid to match. What this allows you to do is to bring in other data sets like satellite imagery and combine the two without having to try and match them by hand.

Sat Sep 05, 2015 12:40 am

grimm wrote:Finally my work and my hobby have come together. I thought that LIDAR data and OpenVDB would work well together so I have been working on creating a conversion program for it. This is some initial output from the program of an area near Matsu Alaska that we have some LIDAR data from. The program converts the LIDAR point cloud to a OpenVDB level set. I then use OpenVBD's functions to mesh the set and output to a .obj file. I then just brought the obj into Blender and used Cycles to render it out. I thought it came out better than I was expecting, although still a lot of work to do.

matsu-test2.png

matsu-test3.png

Excellent work fellow Blenderer! I wish you the best. You shall reach the finish line.