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.
- Align your photos, define your reconstruction region and reconstruct your scene.
- Under the Export tab in Workflow, click Mesh to begin export.
- Choose “XYZ Point Cloud” in the ‘Save as file type:’ drop down.
- In the next dialogue, make sure ‘Export Vertex Colours’ is set to ‘True’
- Save your file.
- Edit the extension of the file you saved from.xyz to .txt
- Open Meshlab
- Go to File > Import Mesh and navigate to the file you renamed, select and Open.
- In the dialogue that pops up set:
‘Point format’ to ‘X Y Z R G B’
‘Separator’ to ‘SPACE’
- Hit ‘OK’, your points should load in.
- Go to File in the top menu and click ‘Export Mesh as…’ or hit CTRL+SHIFT+E
- Choose ‘Stanford Polygon File (*.ply) under ‘Files of Type’ and make sure the extension in the ‘File name:’ field ends in .ply
- Hit ‘Save’.
- Upload to Sketchfab as normal.
- Find more information about styling your point cloud, including adjusting the point size, in the Help Center
About the author
Thomas Flynn
Community & Cultural Heritage Lead at Sketchfab.
Expert in 3D scanning, photogrammetry, online publishing & dissemination.
Hi! Thanks for the tutorial! Any idea why a colored mesh is not exporting color info? Doubled checked vertex export is true …
Hi Miguel, hard to undderstand your problem without seeing screen grabs – could you post on the forum and ping me? @nebulousflynn
thanks!
Thanks! 🙂 Done! https://forum.sketchfab.com/t/exporting-colored-point-cloud-from-capture-reality-and-meshlab/13928
I get no “pre-open” options when I import into Meshlab, and it loads without color.
Export with Vertex normal=false and the color appears. Rename the .xyz file to .txt (or .csv) and the options will show. 🙂
Hi William, hmmm not sure what’s happening here. Are you using file > import or dragging your file onto the app window. Also are you using the latest version of Meshlab? It might be worth posting over on their forums too.
thanks Miguel – just saw your response after I posted mine ?
I don’t see an option to import .txt
when I try to drag and drop I get: “Error details: file format txt not supported.”
will I have to use an older version of MeshLab? I am using v1.3.0_64bit
Hi – I’m using Meshlab_64bit_fp v2016.12 (Built on Dec 23 2016) on Windows 10 and can import a .txt file by going to File > Mesh Import, making sure that ‘All known formts’ is selected in the ‘file open’ dialogue window. I can select a .txt file and import selecting ‘X Y Z R G B’ as the Point Format and SPACE as the Separator.
Can you share your operating system and perhaps the point cloud file you are attempting to open?
aah I was using an older version of MeshLab. I downloaded the 2016 version and it works fine.
I followed the tutorial to upload this model: https://skfb.ly/6BMwW
thanks for the help!
awesome!