Web-based visualisation of on-set point cloud data

ABSTRACT

In this paper we present a system for progressive encoding, storage, transmission, and web based visualization of large point cloud datasets. Point cloud data is typically recorded on-set during a film production, and is later used to assist with various stages of the post-production process. The remote visualization of this data (on or off-set, either via desktop or mobile device) can be difficult, as the volume of data can take a long time to be transferred, and can easily overwhelm the memory of a typical 3D web or mobile client. Yet web-based visualization of this data opens up many possibilities for remote and collaborative workflow models. In order to facilitate this workflow, we present a system to progressively transfer point cloud data to a WebGL based client, updating the visualisation as more information is downloaded and maintaining a coherent structure at lower resolutions. Existing work on progressive transfer of 3D assets has focused on well-formed triangle meshes, and thus is unsuitable for use with raw LIDAR data. Our work addresses this challenge directly, and as such the principal contribution is that it is the first published method of progressive visualization of point cloud data via the web.

References

1. M. Botsch, A. Wiratanaya, and L. Kobbelt. Efficient high quality rendering of point sampled geometry. In Proceedings of the 13th Eurographics Workshop on Rendering, EGRW '02, pages 53--64, Aire-la-Ville, Switzerland, Switzerland, 2002. Eurographics Association.
2. J. C. Carr, R. K. Beatson, J. B. Cherrie, T. J. Mitchell, W. R. Fright, B. C. McCallum, and T. R. Evans. Reconstruction and representation of 3D objects with radial basis functions. In Proceedings of the 28th annual conference on Computer graphics and interactive techniques - SIGGRAPH '01, pages 67--76, New York, New York, USA, Aug. 2001. ACM Press.
3. P. Cignoni, M. Callieri, M. Corsini, M. Dellepiane, F. Ganovelli, and G. Ranzuglia. Meshlab: an open-source mesh processing tool. In Eurographics Italian Chapter Conference, pages 129--136. The Eurographics Association, 2008.
4. C. Ericson. Real-time collision detection. CRC Press, 2004.
5. A. Evans, M. Romeo, A. Bahrehmand, J. Agenjo, and J. Blat. 3D graphics on the web: A survey. Computers & Graphics, 41:43--61, Feb. 2014.
6. P.-M. Gandoin and O. Devillers. Progressive lossless compression of arbitrary simplicial complexes. ACM Transactions on Graphics, 21(3):372-372--379-379, July 2002.
7. Y. Huang, J. Peng, C.-C. J. Kuo, and M. Gopi. Octree-based progressive geometry coding of point clouds. In Proceedings of the 3rd Eurographics/IEEE VGTC Conference on Point-Based Graphics, SPBG'06, pages 103--110, Aire-la-Ville, Switzerland, Switzerland, 2006. Eurographics Association.
8. G. Lavoué, L. Chevalier, and F. Dupont. Streaming Compressed 3D Data on the Web using JavaScript and WebGL. In ACM International Conference on 3D Web Technology (Web3D), San Sebastian, Spain, pages 19--27, 2013.
9. M. Limper, S. Wagner, C. Stein, Y. Jung, and A. Stork. Fast delivery of 3D web content: a case study. In Proceedings of the 18th International Conference on 3D Web Technology, pages 11--17. ACM, 2013.
10. A. Maglo, C. Courbet, P. Alliez, and C. Hudelot. Progressive compression of manifold polygon meshes. Computers & Graphics, 36(5):349--359, 2012.
11. B. Merry, P. Marais, and J. Gain. Compression of Dense and Regular Point Clouds. Computer Graphics Forum, 25(4):709--716, Dec. 2006.
12. D. Mongus and B. Žalik. Efficient method for lossless LIDAR data compression. International Journal of Remote Sensing, 32(9):2507--2518, May 2011.
13. M. Pauly, M. Gross, and L. P. Kobbelt. Efficient simplification of point-sampled surfaces. In Proceedings of the Conference on Visualization '02, VIS '02, pages 163--170, Washington, DC, USA, 2002. IEEE Computer Society.
14. J. Peng and C.-C. J. Kuo. Octree-based progressive geometry encoder. In ITCom 2003, pages 301--311. International Society for Optics and Photonics, 2003.
15. I. Prieto, J. L. Izkara, and F. J. Delgado. From point cloud to web 3D through CityGML. In Virtual Systems and Multimedia (VSMM), 2012 18th International Conference on, pages 405--412, 2012.
16. S. Rusinkiewicz and M. Levoy. QSplat: A multiresolution point rendering system for large meshes. In Proceedings of the 27th annual conference on Computer graphics and interactive techniques - SIGGRAPH '00, pages 343--352, 2000.
17. R. Schnabel and R. Klein. Octree-based Point-Cloud Compression. In SPBG, pages 111--120, 2006.
18. W3C. Web Performance Working Group, 2014.

Index Terms

• Computing methodologies

  • Computer graphics

    • Graphics systems and interfaces

    • Shape modeling

• Theory of computation

  • Randomness, geometry and discrete structures

    • Computational geometry