Touchdesigner & Polycam Point Clouds: Pt. 1 Scan Anything on Your Phone and Create a Point Cloud

Here's an easy method to scan a room, object, or just about anything else, and turn it into a point cloud in Touchdesigner.
Project files for this and all other tutorials available on my Patreon: / owsley_wylyfyrd
Using any lidar-equipped smartphone (I use an iPhone 13 Pro Max in the example video) and the Polycam App you can scan anything in your environment and use that data to create beautiful point cloud artwork in Touchdesigner.
This tutorial covers downloading the app, getting the scan, and importing the point file into Touchdesigner. Once in Touchdesigner, we work on setting up an instancing network that allows you to view, navigate, and ultimately manipulate these scans. In the next video of this series, we'll cover how to manipulate these scans to look like what's happening in the video introduction.

[@AlexandreRangel]

Great resource! Thank you, Owsley!!

[@paxk.8624]

thank you so much for this one. Good length and a good amount of information. Well done!

[@homeroruiz7283]

Thanks for the amazing content, pretty useful for media artists!

[@zeobruins2204]

saved my schoolwork, thank you!

[@Flor-ly5cg]

best and to the point. thank you

[@ataberkycl]

its so cool, thank you!

[@avesmal834]

its very useful thanks

[@tiorickyz]

You're the best!

[@owsleywylyfyrd]

Awww shucks ❤️

[@charlottelee1343]

Thanks for this tutorial - it was so helpful!! I was wondering how you export your point cloud files after this while maintaining the 3D and color data?

[@Monja191]

Alright!! 🤩

[@zhenghankun7033]

about 4:45-4:46 why can you just change into 4:46 ???? when i add pointfilein just ture waring :failed to open file.

[@sakharov00in]

does anyone know where to find a ready ply file of a landscape? is it possible to create a work like that but with a landscape instead? thanks

[@user-jp1wx6sy2w]

how do blender Ply Export option please T.T
not color..

[@ManuMarea]

polycam is not free what about luma?

[@rayiskadir]

8:02 mine doest connect add and convert to geo1 , the geo doesn’t show the option to connect

[@oscardelotzthorpe6585]

Hi cheers for the video, When I add the render1 I don't get that moving arrow you get from the geo1 to the render1 its like its not firing across to the render any ideas why this is ?

[@oscardelotzthorpe6585]

oh no worries just needed to press space bar whilst render was selected

[@easoli47]

Hello ! I tried every type of .ply, nothings work for me i always have black screen and no pointcloud ... If someone have an idea t.t ...

[@nokiaaingel]

when i adjust the points size in the material sprite, it changes in the geo and cam but not in the render, any idea what im doing wrong?

[@dereklindsay3431]

this happens for me too :(

[@owsleywylyfyrd]

Probably need to change a setting in your Convert SOP. There's a menu at the bottom of the second tab in that SOP's parameters that defaults to "render as lines". Change that to "render as point sprites" and they should start behaving.

[@undressedbroccoli]

My point file does not include any r,g,b values but it has nx, ny, nz instead .... does someone know more about this?

[@PhaseDeRecherche]

I have the same, any solution ?

[@owsleywylyfyrd]

n values are point normals. They basically tell your points what direction to face. What format did you export from Polycam with? I believe there are some settings you need to select to export color information.

[@biddyp2853]

I changed nx, ny, nz to red, green, blue and it worked.

[@PhaseDeRecherche]

I have exported in .ply

[@biddyp2853]

so did I @@PhaseDeRecherche In the point select 2 operator, I changed nx, ny, nz to red, green, blue and it worked.

[@NurbNerb]

Polycam does not work like this unless you pay for it. if you are using the free version expect a really crappy experience when trying to scan.