How do i write Emgu Mcvpoint3d32f points to .ply file format 3D recontruction and Mesh

Question

I have huge collection of Emgu mcvpoint3d32f points. I am confused to write those point into a .ply file format . Through those point i want to create a mesh using meshlab. How do i write those points into an .ply file format . How do i get vertex points and the faces from the Emgu mcvpoint3d32f points.

Any help ...

Answer 1

MCvPoint3D32f represents vertex coordinates, so you already have your vertices. To create a mesh you need, as you said, faces (typically triangles) and it seems you don't have them. You will have to generate them, and there is no generic way of doing this. It all depends on how you generated your points and what you want to achieve.

There are a couple of algorithms for creating a mesh (i.e. the faces) if you have a large set of points (called a "point cloud" in the literature). Some of them are implemented in MeshLab. See here to get you started with a method called Poisson Surface Reconstruction in MeshLab. Whether this gets you what you want is a question of how your point cloud looks.

Note that you can export a mesh file just with points / vertices and without faces, load it into MeshLab, and then play with the algorithms I mentioned in MeshLab.

Regarding mesh files: PLY format is documented here. OBJ is an alternative which is even a bit simpler to create. Stay with the ASCII formats for the beginning.