README

• Getting Started

About

Potree is a free open-source WebGL based point cloud renderer for large point clouds. It is based on the TU Wien Scanopy project and it was part of the Harvest4D Project.

Newest information and work in progress is usually available on twitter

Contact: Markus Schütz (mschuetz@potree.org)

Reference: Potree: Rendering Large Point Clouds in Web Browsers

Build

Make sure you have node.js installed

Install all dependencies, as specified in package.json, then, install the gulp build tool:

npm install -g gulp
npm install -g rollup
cd /var/www/potree
npm install --save

Use the gulp watch command to

• create ./build/potree
• watch for changes to the source code and automatically create a new build on change
• start a web server at localhost:1234. Go to http://localhost:1234/examples/ to test the examples.

gulp watch

Note: If you use Visual Studio Code, to avoid a potential conflict with VSC exceeding the file watch limit and preventing potree from starting, run echo fs.inotify.max_user_watches=524288 | sudo tee -a /etc/sysctl.conf && sudo sysctl -p.

Deploy

Deploy potree to the EC2 instances serving the Veritas sites:

Active EC2 instances (as of 2020-04-24):

Deploy steps (primarily for Veritas Dev server):

1. Download the .zip file from GitHub to your local computer.
2. Upload to the server

scp -i ~/.ssh/NextDroidDev.pem ~/Downloads/potree-develop.zip ubuntu@dev.viz.nextdroid.com

3. Log in to the server:

ssh -i ~/.ssh/NextDroidDev.pem ubuntu@dev.viz.nextdroid.com:/home/ubuntu

4. Stop nginx and install new deployment

   unzip -q potree-develop.zip
   rm potree-develop.zip
   sudo systemctl stop nginx
   sudo rm -rf /var/www/potree
   sudo mv potree-develop /var/www/potree
   cd /var/www/potree/
   npm install
   gulp watch

Wait for gulp to finish. The output will look something like this ...

21:31:47] Finished 'watch' after 823 ms
src/Potree.js → build/potree/potree.js...
(!) Circular dependencies
src/utils.js -> src/utils/Profile.js -> src/utils.js
src/utils.js -> src/utils/Measure.js -> src/utils.js
created build/potree/potree.js in 3.3s
src/workers/BinaryDecoderWorker.js → build/potree/workers/BinaryDecoderWorker.js...
created build/potree/workers/BinaryDecoderWorker.js in 92ms

... then ^c to terminate

5. Start nginx

sudo systemctl start nginx

Downloads

PotreeConverter source and Win64 binaries

Showcase

Take a look at the potree showcase for some live examples.

Compatibility

Credits

• The multi-res-octree algorithms used by this viewer were developed at the Vienna University of Technology by Michael Wimmer and Claus Scheiblauer as part of the Scanopy Project.
• Three.js, the WebGL 3D rendering library on which potree is built.
• plas.io point cloud viewer. LAS and LAZ support have been taken from the laslaz.js implementation of plas.io. Thanks to Uday Verma and Howard Butler for this!
• Harvest4D Potree currently runs as Master Thesis under the Harvest4D Project
• Christian Boucheny (EDL developer) and Daniel Girardeau-Montaut (CloudCompare). The EDL shader was adapted from the CloudCompare source code!
• Martin Isenburg, Georepublic, Veesus, Sigeom Sa, SITN, LBI ArchPro, Pix4D as well as all the contributers to potree and PotreeConverter and many more for their support.