Software

In the following, software on the topics

is introduced.

Laserscanning (LIDAR)

Free LiDAR Tools

  • LAStools:
    LAStools is a collection of highly-efficient, well written tools having multi-core batch processing skills. The data format coming under LAS, LAZ and ASCII data sets are able to manipulate. The little OpenGL viewer called lasview can be used to visualize the LiDAR data in LAS format. TIN and some data structures can be created from the viewer itself. More info: https://rapidlasso.com/lastools/
  • PCL (The Point Cloud Library ):
    The Point Cloud Library (PCL) is a product of large scale, open project for 2D/3D image and point cloud processing. Within the framework of PCL, numerous state-of-the art algorithms are contained including filtering, feature estimation, surface reconstruction, registration, model fitting and segmentation. In order to simplify the usage and development schemes, the PCL is split into several modular libraries by which the PCL Visualization module is specially developed for displaying the point clouds. More info: https://pointclouds.org/
  • PDAL:
    PDAL is a C++ library for translating and manipulating point cloud data.  In addition to the library code, PDAL provides a suite of command-line applications that users can conveniently use to process, filter, translate, and query point cloud data. More info: https://pdal.io/en/stable/index.html
  • CloudCompare:
    CloudCompare is an application for managing and comparing huge amount of 3D point clouds. Generally, more than 10 millions points (including surface meshes) and up to 120 million points with 2 Gb memory can be manipulated. Its development commenced in 2004 as part of a CIFRE thesis project. The application includes several features for processing, managing and visualization of point cloud data. Besides, it provides a ccViewer for displaying data on the screen. Mainly ASCII , binary and LAS file formats are accepted by the system. More info: https://www.danielgm.net/cc/
  • Meshlab:
    Meshlab is a powerful free open-source software which could be used to view and to edit all well-established 3D formats. It is capable to work directly with point clouds and generate and edit polygon mesh 3D models as well. It requires quite a bit of learning effort to fully utilize all its functionalities, but it is very simple to use MeshLab just as a 3D point cloud viewer. More info: https://www.meshlab.net/
  • Quick Terrain Reader:
    The Quick Terrain Reader is the free version of well-known Quick Terrain Modeler. The Quick Terrain Reader is capable of visualizing pre-built digital elevation models (DEMs) and point clouds. End users are also able to freely move through the terrain in a fast and intuitive way with the software. Some functionality with LAS files, displaying of RGB color values on a per-point basis and also intensity values can be easily accomplished. More info: https://appliedimagery.com/download/
  • Pointy:
    Pointy is a free and open source point cloud viewer forked from Radiohead House of Cards Project, based on the Processing Programming Language. These are the controls for Pointy: w/up arrow ( forward), s/down arrow (backward), a/left arrow (turn left), d/right arrow (turn right), e (move upward) and c (move downward). More info:  http://mac.softpedia.com/progDownload/pointy-Download-55381.html

Notes: A more comprehensive list of open-source lidar processing software is available at https://portal.opentopography.org/tools/listTools

Commercial LiDAR Tools

  • Terrasolid:
    Terrasolid software packages are employed for airborne and mobile Lidar point clouds and image processing. The software can be bounded with various applications such as data calibration, point classification, delivery product production and etc. Furthermore, software includes a, TerraStereo, for the visualization of large point clouds in mono and stereo mode. TerraStereo contains sophisticated methods for displaying point clouds and utilizes high-end graphics hardware in order to speed up dynamic and stereo visualizations. The package runs as stand-alone application. Most of the Terrasolid applications are built on top of Bentley software. For more info: https://appliedimagery.com/download/
  • Quick Terrain Modeler:
    QT Modeler is one of the world's premier 3D point cloud and terrain visualization software package. It allows visualizing, analyzing and exploitation of vast amounts of data. The package can visualize the points as a cloud, as a gridded surface in a DEM, or display both simultaneously. The software is originally designed for use with LiDAR, but flexible enough to accommodate other 3D data sources as well. QT Modeler provides user friendly experiences that allow end-users to work with significantly more data, render larger models, analyze data faster, and export a variety of products. Once you display the data, you can enhance the view using several visualization tools such as custom lighting, custom elevation palettes, model coloration, and elevation exaggeration. For more Info: https://appliedimagery.com/download/
  • SCOP++:
    Powerful comprehensive solutions for filtering, classification, quality control & editing and visualizing of LIDAR point clouds are offered by the LIDAR Box, containing in SCOP++ Kernel, SCOP++ LIDAR and inpho's DTM editing station DTMaster. The newly improved filtering scheme now easily detects large man-made structures as well as low vegetation objects. At the beginning, SCOP++ is designed for handling of every kind of DTM projects, with data coming under LIDAR by INPHO. The software currently comes with an efficient interactive checking and editing tools for large point clouds with optional stereo measurement capability. For more info: https://de.geospatial.trimble.com/products-and-solutions/trimble-inpho
  • Lidar360:
    The LiDAR360 Framework lays the foundation for the entire software suite. With TB-level processing power, the Framework contains tools required for effectively interacting and manipulating LiDAR point cloud data. Functions include data management, automatic strip alignment, and point cloud classification. It also allows users to upgrade to application-specific modules such as terrain, ALS/ TLS Forestry, and Geological Analysis. In the latest version 5.0, the powerline module is added to LiDAR360. Users can conduct professional analysis on powerline data, such as classification, danger point detection, and so on. https://www.greenvalleyintl.com/LiDAR360/

Image Matching / Structure from Motion (SFM)

Structure from Motion describes the process of 3D surface calculation with 2D image information from different perspectives. In order to calculate 3D points from 2D image data, it is first necessary to orient the image composite. This is done by a combination of photogrammetric algorithms. In particular, these are feature point detection and extraction, assignment of homologous point pairs, relative orientation of image pairs, robust estimators for outlier detection, and bundle block adjustment.

Freeware SfM Tools

  • Bundler + CMVS:  
    Is the first SFM tool that implented the entire process chain in one software. The console-based, open-source program offers together with PMVS2 a flexible tool with many settings for result optimization. More... (Bundler)  und More... (CMVS for Dense Matching)
  • COLMAP: 
    COLMAP is an open-source, general-purpose, end-to-end image-based 3D reconstruction pipeline (i.e. for Structure-from-Motion (SfM) and Multi-View Stereo (MVS)) with a graphical and a command-line interface. The source code has been published via GitHub. More...
  • MicMac: 
    Is a console program for surface reconstruction. More...
  • Meshroom:
    Is a free software by Alicevision and is a good alternative to the widely used commercial software Agisoft Metashape. More...
  • Regard3D: 
    Is a free open source software for generating 3D models via structure-from-motion. The tool is available for Windows and MacOS. As "OpenSource" suggests, the complete code of the program is open. More...
  • SF3M:
    Is a tool for calculating 3D models from image data. Among other things, resulting point clouds can be geo-referenced and filtered.  More...
  • Visual SFM:
    Is an offline SFM tool by Changchang Wu, which provides graphics optimized algorithms, minimizing the computation time by a significant factor. Besides, the different steps of the 3D point calculation are well documented and visualized. An implemented GUI with 3D viewer rounds the whole to a recommendable SFM tool. More...

More software (alternatively to Market Leader Agisoft Metashape) can be found here. Moreover there are several smartphone apps, usually listed by the keywords "3D scan" or "3D print".

Commercial SFM Tools

  • Agisoft Metashape: 
    Market leader. Is a SFM tool with complete graphical interface and 3D viewer. It allows the calculation of the pre-orientation and 3D point calculation with different parameters, which allows to optimize the result according to the need. More...
  • 3DF Zepyhr: 
    3DF Zephyr is a very comprehensive SFM tool with graphical user interface and 3D viewer, very similar to Agisoft Metashape. The entry into 3DF Zephyr is very user-friendly by a so-called wizard, but for more complex problems the tool offers numerous options for parameterization. More...
  • RealityCapture: More...

Software programming

Standard software (Image editing, visualisation, etc)

Open Source:

  • GIMP (Raster graphics: Generation, Editing, Manipulation)
  • Irfanview (Show raster graphics)
  • ImageJ (Manipulating raster graphics)
  • Faststone (View raster graphics)

Kommerziell:

About this page

Danilo Schneider
Last modified: Nov 15, 2022