Dear CloudCompare enthusiasts,

Exceptionnaly, this newsletter is not a announcement of a new stable release of CloudCompare (even though the 2.12.alpha version is almost ready and quite stable ;).

Today, I'd like to advertise 2 projects that try to blend CloudCompare with Python. I hope this will open new horizons for some of you!

Python wrappers for CloudCompare
Mind that these 2 projects are still work in progress. Constructive feedback is welcome: please declare bugs or ask questions on their respective github pages.
1. CloudCompy, by Paul Rascle

This project allows one to load clouds and access their internal data as numpy arrays, call some of CloudCompare's algorithms, apply your own processes, and save the result.
  • you'll find in the readme.md file most of the directions to build it on Linux and Windows, as well as an example of how it can be used
  • the latest available Windows binary can be found here
The tests are good examples of how it can be used:
  • test 01: load and save a cloud, get the scalar field names, compute the gravity center
  • test 02: export coordinates to SF, computes its average and standard deviation, and min and max values
  • test 03: compute cloud curvature, filter points by SF value
  • test 04: load a point cloud
  • test 05: access the scalar fields data
  • test 06: manually apply a translation to a cloud, or use the Global Shift mechanism at loading time
  • test 07: load a cloud and a polyine, crope the cloud with the polyline, smooth the polyline, compute its length, etc.
  • test 08: create primitives (box, cone, sphere, cylinder, etc.) or a quadric
  • test 09: create primitives, apply a transformation, and compute the distances between a cloud and these primitives
  • test 10: ICP registration
  • test 11: Delaunay 2.5D triangulation + smooth (see test 14 as well)
  • test 12: apply a rigid transformation to a cloud, fit a plane
  • test 13: compute the cloud octree
  • test 14: export normals to SFs, export some statistics from the resulting SFs
  • test 15: triangulate a point cloud and sample points on it
  • test 16: compute the octree and extract poins inside neighborhoods (spherical, cylindrical or cubical)
2. CloudCompare Python Plugin by Thomas Montaigu

This plugin allows to write Python scripts in CloudCompare, by providing python bindings to the set of CloudCompare’s libraries (that you can use in C++ plugins) as well as embedding a python interpreter to run scripts. This plugin can be used to run Python scripts via the GUI or via the command line.

You'll find the extensive documentation here with all the bulding instructions and examples
(note that you can find the above pieces of information in the 'release' section of the official website)