Points to Mesh turns a point cloud into a mesh by connecting its points with triangles. Every point becomes a vertex of the mesh, so the mesh follows the scanned points exactly and keeps the detail they capture. Use it for clean, dense scans. For a noisy scan, Fusion gives a smoother result; to compare all methods, see How to Turn Point Clouds into Mesh.
The point cloud does not need normals. If it has none, Points to Mesh computes them during triangulation. If it already has normals, the tool uses them as they are, so make sure they are oriented consistently (Orient Point Normals) or remove them (Remove Normals).
Build a mesh with Points to Mesh
- Select one or more point clouds in the Scene tree. Each selected cloud becomes a separate mesh.
- Click Points › Points to Mesh.
- Adjust the settings if needed; the defaults work for most scans.
- Click Triangulate, or press Enter.
Settings
The Nearest Neighbours field is always visible; the other settings are under Advanced.
| Setting | What it does | Default |
|---|---|---|
| Nearest Neighbours | The number of nearest points used to build the triangles around each point. Too small a value can give a poor triangulation and extra holes; too large a value makes the computation slower. | 16 (from 6 to 99) |
| Critical Angle | The largest allowed angle between neighbouring triangles around a point. | 90° |
| Fill Holes | Fills holes after triangulation. | On |
| Auto Detect Holes to Fill | Shown when Fill Holes is on. MeshInspector chooses the holes to fill itself: holes whose boundary is shorter than one tenth of the diagonal of the cloud's bounding box. | On |
| Max Hole Length | Shown when Auto Detect Holes to Fill is off. All holes with a boundary shorter than this length are filled. | 0 |
| Preserve Point Cloud | Keeps the original point cloud in the scene, hidden, in addition to the mesh. | Off |
MeshInspector remembers the values you used last time.
Result
- A new mesh named after the cloud with Triangulated added, for example Nefertiti Points Triangulated. It is selected and shown with flat shading.
- If the points have colors, the mesh vertices get the same colors.
- Without Preserve Point Cloud, the cloud is removed from the scene, and objects nested in it move to the new mesh. With it, the cloud stays in the scene but is hidden.
- The panel closes when the mesh is ready. To undo, press Ctrl+Z (Cmd+Z on macOS).
On a scan of the bust of Nefertiti with 1 009 118 points and no normals, Points to Mesh with the default settings made a mesh with 1 009 118 vertices, 2 018 232 triangles, one component and no holes:
Tips
- Clean the cloud first. Stray points far from the surface turn into spikes and loose pieces. Remove them with Select Outliers before you triangulate.
- Thin out a huge cloud. The mesh has as many vertices as the cloud has points. To get a lighter mesh faster, reduce the cloud with Sample Points first.
- Too many holes? Increase Nearest Neighbours, or turn off Auto Detect Holes to Fill and set a larger Max Hole Length. Larger holes can be closed later with Fill Holes.
- Noisy result? The mesh repeats the noise of the points. Smooth the cloud with Points › Reduce Noise first, or use Fusion.
- Control the gaps yourself. The drop-down list of Points to Mesh also has Alpha Shape, which builds a mesh from the points with one Radius setting.
