CloudCompare forum

Hello everyone! :)

I just discovered CloudCompare and with this opportunity I'd like to thank you and congratulate you on the amazing work you have done!

I am trying to compare two point clouds and extract information about the displacement field between them, so I would need the signed distance in X-Y-Z form for each point. I have come across the plugin M3C2 in other threads of this forum, but unfortunately I have not been able to find said plugin anywhere...

I am working on Linux Mint 17.2 Rafaela, compiled everything from source (acquired via git) so I have the latest version (2.6.2 beta compiled with Qt 4.8.6).
I should probably say that I don't even see the option about installing M3C2 in the ccmake configuration page, and this is what seems so strange to me.

Thank you in advance for any indications!

Indeed, M3C2 is not yet a fully open plugin. It is kindly provided as a binary (on Windows) by Dimitri Lague's team.

The sources should be disclosed in a near future however. Meanwhile the only way to use it... is to use the Windows version.

Thank you very much for your quick reply!

I will try on a Windows machine and will keep on the lookout for when the code becomes available! :)

I'm sorry but I have another question...

I have been able to run the plugin on a Windows machine, but the distance calculated between two point clouds is still a scalar value. The only vectorial output I can see are the X-Y-Z normals, so I was thinking that perhaps the displacement field is the product of the distance and the normals, but I'm not quite sure if this is correct.

Am I missing something in the use of the plugin? Or is this the standard procedure (calculate the signed scalar distance and then multiply by the normals)?

Thanks again!

Indeed, the plugin outputs the (signed) distance along the normal direction. So you could deduce the 'displacement' vector by multiplying the normal by the distance.

Okay, thank you very much! Seems pretty good!

Is the M3C2 plugin still only available on windows?

Not sure. Maybe it's incorporated in the latest Linux releases?