Tutorial: How to Upload a point cloud from Reality Capture to Sketchfab

A quick and straightforward tutorial on how to convert your Reality Capture scans to a point cloud scan and upload them to Sketchfab. Useful for the plant and flower point cloud challenge and future works. 

1. Align your photos, define your reconstruction region and reconstruct your scene.
   
2. Under the Export tab in Workflow, click Mesh to begin export.   
3. Choose “XYZ Point Cloud” in the ‘Save as file type:’ drop down.
   
4. In the next dialogue, make sure ‘Export Vertex Colours’ is set to ‘True’
   
   
5. Save your file.
6. Edit the extension of the file you saved from.xyz to .txt
7. Open Meshlab
   
8. Go to File > Import Mesh and navigate to the file you renamed, select and Open.
   
9. In the dialogue that pops up set:
   ‘Point format’ to ‘X Y Z R G B’
   ‘Separator’ to ‘SPACE’ 
   

   

   
   

10. Hit ‘OK’, your points should load in.
11. Go to File in the top menu and click ‘Export Mesh as…’ or hit CTRL+SHIFT+E
12. Choose ‘Stanford Polygon File (*.ply) under ‘Files of Type’ and make sure the extension in the ‘File name:’ field ends in .ply
    
13. Hit ‘Save’.
14. Upload to Sketchfab as normal.
15. Find more information about styling your point cloud, including adjusting the point size, in the Help Center