CWI Pointcloud utility library

This repository builds a utility library for using cwipc objects to represent pointclouds.

The idea behind a cwipc pointcloud object is that it represents a pointcloud (with x/y/z coordinates, r/g/b values and possibly information on which camera angle the point was captured from) without having to include the whole PCL Point Cloud Library API if you do not need it.

the idea is that you can pass a cwipc object around without knowing what is inside it, and if the receiving end also has PCL knowledge it can access the pointcloud data without it having been copied. And if a receiver does need access to the individual point data it will only be copied when it arrives there (so a receiver can allocate buffers in the right type of memory, etc).

The current design document is in pointcloud-api.md.

The library contains utility functions to read and write a cwipc object from a .ply file. There are also functions to read/write the binary representation of a cwipc but these are mainly for debugging (the binary representation is not portable between machines).

Installing

For use within VRtogether you can get pre-built zipfiles (or tgzfiles for Mac/Linux) from https://baltig.viaccess-orca.com:8443/VRT/nativeclient-group/cwipc_util/releases. Download the most recent release with a normal v_X_.Y.Z name.

Windows

• Install PCL 1.8 from https://github.com/PointCloudLibrary/pcl/releases/download/pcl-1.8.1/PCL-1.8.1-AllInOne-msvc2017-win64.exe. Make sure you select the "add to %PATH% for all users" option.
• Create a folder where you will install all VRtogether DLLs and EXEs, for example C:\vrtogether\installed.
• Extract the cwipc_util_win1064_vX.Y.zip file into c:\vrtogether. This will create bin, lib and include folders inside the C:\vrtogether\installed folder.
• Add the c:\vrtogether\installed\bin folder to the %PATH% system environment variable.

OSX

• Install brew, and then brew install pcl.

• Extract the gzip file into /usr/local:

  cd /usr/local
  [sudo] tar xfv .../cwipc_util_osx1012_vX.Y.tgz
  

Ubuntu 18.04

• Install PCL with apt-get install libpcl-dev.

• Extract the gzip file into /usr/local:

  cd /usr/local
  [sudo] tar xfv .../cwipc_util_osx1012_vX.Y.tgz
  

Building

If you want to build cwipc_util from source follow the next steps:

OSX

• Install XCode

• Install various dependencies:

  brew install cmake
  brew install pcl
  

• Building with XCode:

  mkdir build-xcode
  cd build-code
  cmake .. -G Xcode
  open cwipc_util.xcodeproj
  

  and then build it.

• Building with Makefiles:

  mkdir build-makefile
  cd build-makefile
  cmake ..
  make
  make test # optional
  make install # optional
  

• Note: for reasons unknown the file CMakeFiles/cwipc_util-config.cmake tends to disappear, this will have make install fail. Fix by running the following command:

  git checkout -- CMakeFiles/cwipc_util-config.cmake
  

Linux

tbd

Windows

• Install Windows 10-64

• Install Visual Studio Community Edition

• Install Notepad++

• Install Git (checkout as-is, commit as-is for Unix newlines)

• Install CMake

• Install PCL 1.8 from https://github.com/PointCloudLibrary/pcl/releases/download/pcl-1.8.1/PCL-1.8.1-AllInOne-msvc2017-win64.exe

• Configure the repository using cmake-gui.

  • Make sure you select the right Visual Studio version and 64bits.
  • Set the installation directory. Suggested is .../DIR/installed where DIR is the directory where you have cloned all the repos.
  • Generate VS projects in a build subdirectory.
  • Alternatively, if you use git bash, use the following commands:

   mkdir build
   cd build
   cmake .. -G "Visual Studio 15 Win64"
  

• Open Visual Studio solution, build ALL_BUILD, then build RUN_TESTS then build INSTALL.

• Add the installation bin directory (.../DIR/installed from the examples above) to your system-wide environment variable PATH. This will allow dependent packages to find all the DLLs and such.

• Note: for reasons unknown the file CMakeFiles/cwipc_util-config.cmake tends to disappear, this will have make install fail. Fix by running the following command:

  git checkout -- CMakeFiles/cwipc_util-config.cmake