[vtkusers] How to visualize huge point cloud data (terrain) with VTK?

[Kevin H. Hobbs]

On Tue, 2009-03-03 at 02:54 -0500, Dasan Cheong wrote:
> Hello everyone!
> 
> I am trying to visualize huge point cloud data (it only consists of
> xyz) collected by a scanning laser.  It is huge terrain data. The file
> size of the data is more than 1GB.
> 
> Is there any good way to visualize them with VTK?

Yes, absolutely!

Please, give us more detail about what you want to do.

In order to view the data as a point cloud:
	1. Load all of the point coordinates into a vtkPoints.
	2. Add the points to a vtkPolyData.
	3. Pass the vtkPolyData through the vtkMaskPoints filter.
	   (Which can create a vertex (rendered) for each point (not
	    rendered).
	4. Render.

However there may be more efficient ways to store the data in memory,
and more effective ways to display them as well.

If the points are regularly spaced you could load them as image data
which would consume 1/3 the memory!

If you want a surface you could add triangles between the points with
the vtkDelaunay2D filter.
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