The renderer is adding the lighting in this case.
A mesh would be doable but making it 3D printable would be pretty difficult. Without lots of processing it would have what amounts to thousands of delicate overhanging pieces that wouldn’t be practical to print.
I have heard that there are tools that can attempt to translate a cloud of point data into more regular finite geometric objects. Assuming the goal here is something that merely looks right as opposed to holding a machining tolerance seems like one of those tools would satisfy.
For sure! There’s lots of interesting stuff emerging constantly and identification of objects based on point clouds is a thing. What really complicates the task is making the model 3D printable. There are so many gotchas with 3D printing.
The low hanging fruit solution would be to cast rays from top to bottom and only include things that are in the first collision of the ray. So a complex object like a table becomes a box which makes it easy to 3D print because all of the overhangs are gone. However things like ducts hanging from the ceiling would become walls because the first collision is basically at the ceiling.
Creating a 3D printable model is doable but it would take more hours of labor than I’m willing to do on a whim (I’ll send the original data if someone wants to try). At some point in the future there might be a filter or a button to make this happen but we’re not there yet.
Overhang would be a challenge for 3D printing a floor plan, for sure.
This is so cool!!! I had my '72 Opel GT in the second bay in automotive when you came through with the LIDAR. I would really love to have the point cloud data from that part of the scan… or all of it, really, to play around with getting it into something like Unity or Unreal. And to convert the scan of the GT into an editable model with which I can have much fun and create things like an air dam for the front end. It’s the ultimate 3D scanner!
And @Bizwacky, that’s a great idea for the interactive map! I’ve been planning to create an interactive map app for the space that’s in two parts (as soon as @jast gets my workspace set up on the DMS servers); an app that will geolocate where you are and provide a way to select where you’d like to go and show you the paths to get there, and a secondary app or another aspect of the map app that lets you search for and locate specific tools, accessories, supplies, etc. The LIDAR map would make it that much more interesting.
I now, very stupidly, want to make a VR app that could be used for virtual tours… friggin’ masochist, evidently… 
Thanks for doing this and posting it, @lukeiamyourfather! Very much appreciated!
I would greatly appreciate a copy of the original data to play with, if you would be so kind.
Thanks very much!
The accuracy of this setup is about 1 cm so it’s probably not good enough to create functional parts from. Accuracy of 1 cm at the scale of a city block is great. Accuracy of 1 cm on a 1 m part isn’t so good. Other 3D scanning methods like laser triangulation, structured light, or photogrammetry would be better for this because they have much better accuracy (sub mm in some cases). I think DMS has all three of those but it’s been a while so not sure at this point. Photo is from a class about laser triangulation scanner that DMS had/has.
I exported it with and without the ceilings and in 3 formats. None are native to LIDAR because the tool I’m using isn’t really a LIDAR tool. They can be converted to whatever formats though (via MeshLab, CloudCompare, Blender, etc.). The original LAZ files aren’t aligned with each other and they’re missing some info like normals and time stamps so these should be more useful than the original data.
BGEO - Binary format native to Houdini
PLY - ASCII based format that is widely supported
ABC - Binary format that is widely supported
They’ll be in my member folder on the file server when I figure out how to get them there which will probably be later today. It’s fewer points than I thought at 369 million points but the files are still pretty big (PLY file is 31 GB).
Should’ve replied to this earlier but if we want to do that then maybe do it after the expansion is done? The scan as-is has lots of clutter, people, and weird stuff that I would fix if I were to do it again like putting a blanket over the mirror in the workshop. It’s likely that I could come back and do this again in the future. This data could be useful to learn the workflow but then swap out the data with better data in the future.
The exported files are in members/LukeOlson/lidar.
Pretty awesome @lukeiamyourfather! Sorry if I missed this but you mentioned it was captured with a GeoSLAM ZEB Horizon scanner. Does DMS own or did you have access to it some other way? Also, roughly how long did it take you to walk the space to capture it all?
how did you do this??
DMS doesn’t have a tool like this as far as I know but they did or still do have other types of 3D scanners. I have access to the tool via a makerspace like lab at work. I’ve discussed my work a bit before like the thread below.
@AlexRhodes runs the lab at work where I checked out the tool. Employees have access to the lab, tools, training, etc. It’s a great resource. 
It took around 40 minutes to do the scan which was split into three parts (old space, new space, and outside). The data was captured at normal walking speed. Turns out it takes a while to walk through everything at DMS.
Scroll up.
Thank you, Luke! Appreciate your insights, and the files. I will definitely be on the hunt for that DMS scanner. Have all kinds of uses for that.
Exactly. Totally agreed, re waiting for the expansion to finish. It’ll be a little while yet before I can tackle the interactive directory anyway. Business has picked back up, thankfully.
Good luck with the scanner. It may have “left the building”. There was chat a couple of years ago about “where is the scanner”, and I don’t remember that we found it.
@Team_3D_Fab is actively working on getting a new 3D scanner. Likely a structured light solution.
No ETA yet, as we’re working to get rid of some of our old toys first.
I’m more than willing to help look for it.
Fantastic work and many thanks for doing this. Extremely interesting!
Now that things are opening back up and classes are starting to appear again I’d love to see some on any 3D scanning gear DMS has on hand. I didn’t think we had much and I didn’t find anything on the Wiki.
For what it’s worth, which isn’t much, the “corridor crew” on YouTube talks in many of their videos about how they make 3D models using normal cameras and compositing software. This may be a good “now” solution.
This is fantastic!
