Autodesk Labs Utilities Point Cloud Tool for 3ds Max

If you works lots with Point Clouds (Volume Rendering, Laser Scans, fluid simulations, etc) but have been thwarted by 3dsMax’s lightweight (nonexistant?) support for them, previously you had to go look elsewhere for tools like Krakatoa.  Autodesk has released a new “Labs” product called “Project Helix” that boosts this lacking area significantly.

Bring your visualizations into context with Project Helix, a powerful technology prototype enabling display and rendering of 3D laser scanning/LiDAR data sets with Autodesk® 3ds Max® and Autodesk® 3ds Max® Design software. With the 3ds Max Point Cloud Tools you can more quickly import as-built site references to help evaluate and visualize your designs in the context of their surrounding elements. Point cloud data sets are often created by 3D scanners and represent a set of measured vertices in a three-dimensional coordinate system. Using an automatic process, these devices measure a large number of points on the surface of an object and output a point cloud as a data file.

It’s only available until December 20th, but hopefully they’ll integrate it into the next version of 3dsMax.

via Autodesk Labs Utilities Point Cloud Tool for 3ds Max/3ds Max Design.

This story written by Randall Hand

Randall Hand is a visualization scientist working for a federal research lab, aiding researchers to discover the insights buried within their terabyte datasets generated on some of the most powerful supercomputers in the world. He also runs VizWorld.com .