Photo & Color

Reconstructor® provides several coloring tools to effectively manage the colorization of point clouds and meshes.

These tools can be classified according to the objects you want to color and the procedures you need to apply.

Point clouds' color layers managing

Some color information is item intrinsic of point clouds and saved as a color layer, in addition of the ones already included in the raw data (i.e. Reflectance, Color, ...) or after pre-processing step (i.e. Confidence, Inclination, ...).

By using the tools below listed it's possible to create and add new layers of color.

	Histogram To optimize the point clouds color's contrast by histogram stretching. Only single channel layer can be used (reflectance, gray scale layers...). This command is available in the Property browser dialog.
	Color with altitudes To add to the selected point cloud(s) an extra color layer, representing the altitude of the points with respect to one of the tree axes of the current UCS.
	Inclination from plane To add to the selected point cloud(s) an extra color layer, representing the inclination of the points' normals with respect to a given plane that exists in the project. Use it to classify points for a further vegetation removal.
	Color with range To add a layer coloring the distance from the relative observation point.
	Color with ambient light To add to the selected point cloud(s) an extra color layer, Visualization of outdoor large mapped areas can be enhanced with this layer.
	Compute 3D reflectance To add to the selected point cloud(s) a special color layer, named 3D Reflectance, that mixes LiDAR intensity and point normals (inclination) to enhance both geometrical and surface characteristics.
	Add color layer from image To apply an image on the point cloud (e.g. a 2Dview after a color editing). Pay attention to the dimensions of the images: they must be the same of the point cloud ones.
	Merge or split layers To combine RGB and scalar layers to obtain a customized new layer of color for point clouds.

A particular and useful tool is dedicated to manipulation of layers of colors:

Colors mapping

To manage an artificial colorization for a given color layer of a point cloud. Color information can be scalar (e.g. reflectance, range, confidence) or vectorial (e.g. inclination). It's also possible to add layers from external images. The purpose of this command is to manage and create an artificial colorization for a given color layer of a point cloud.

Camera calibration

Images from external cameras can be calibrated (oriented) on point cloud and meshes to obtain colored 3d models (see at the Colorization paragraph).

Images & calibration

This tools are used to calibrate images on point clouds and meshes and to determine the external and intrinsic parameters of a camera:

	Camera calibration on a model
	Camera calibration using 3D points
	Calibrate camera intrinsic

Manage projectors

Several kind of 3D projectors can be created in Reconstructor® and used to project images on the 3D scene.

Create projector

This functions creates a projector in four different frustum types: Perspective, Orthographic, Spherical and Cylindrical projectors. An additional way to create perspective or spherical projectors is done by a calibration (by importing a Reconstructor® camera calibration file) using a valid image.

Load projector

To load (light on) the image on the 3D model.

Unload projector

To unload the image from the 3D model.

Colorization

A mapping (on point clouds and meshes) of calibrated images from external cameras is possible, in order to obtain colored point cloud and meshes.

Texture mapping

To color point clouds and meshes by using external images (and also extracted panoramic cameras from perspective picture in Reconstructor®)

Color clouds with photos

Create panorama

To create a create panorama (spherical 360° equi-rectangular) images starting from perspective images acquired with a camera centered on a 3D scanner head and rotating with them.

When you import .zfs or .fls point clouds a spherical camera (projector) can be automatically created (see LineUp import Wizard settings).

Create texture map

Opens a tool to texture map a selected mesh, given a texture view (a camera or a projector) and one or more projectors (calibrated images).

UAV and imaging

This tool is used to Import GeoTIFF as an orthographic camera.

Import georeferenced tif...

Imports a georeferenced tiff (GeoTIFF) file as an orthographic camera.

To change the point clouds’ color layers, select the point cloud from the project window and set the Color Mapped option in the Property Browser.

By opening the Colors mapping tool, a complete overview of the layers of color is available.