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 research projects Harvest4D, GCD Doctoral College and Superhumans.
• Newest information and work in progress is usually available on twitter
• Contact: Markus Schütz ([email protected])
• References:
  • Potree: Rendering Large Point Clouds in Web Browsers (2016)
  • Fast Out-of-Core Octree Generation for Massive Point Clouds (2020)

Getting Started

Install on your PC

Install node.js

Install dependencies, as specified in package.json, and create a build in ./build/potree.

npm install

Run on your PC

Use the npm start 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.

Deploy to a server

• Simply upload the Potree folderm with all your point clouds, the build directory, and your html files to a web server.
• It is not required to install node.js on your webserver. All you need is to host your files online.

Convert Point Clouds to Potree Format

Download PotreeConverter and run it like this:

./PotreeConverter.exe C:/pointclouds/data.las -o C:/pointclouds/data_converted

Copy the converted directory into <potreeDirectory>/pointclouds/data_converted. Then, duplicate and rename one of the examples and modify the path in the html file to your own point cloud.

Downloads

• Potree
• PotreeConverter - Convert your point cloud to the Potree format.
• PotreeDesktop - Desktop version of Potree. Allows drag&drop of point clouds into the viewer.

Examples

VR

Showcase

Funding

Potree is funded by a combination of research projects, companies and institutions.

Research projects who's funding contributes to Potree:

We would like to thank our sponsors for their financial contributions that keep this project up and running!

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.