Help: Getting started with laser scan data and VR

I want to use a laser scanned point cloud with mapped photographic images of a room, like a file from i.e. a Lica Geosystems Scan Station C10-3D laser scanner, and then be able to "walk around" in the room by using the Oculus Rift SDK2 kit.

I am a total newbie. Have anyone done this?

Could I import a scan data file into Unity? How?
Could I then export a file and use it together with the SDK2 kit? How?

Please advice!
/
Jesper

 

What file formats can you export from the scanner?

 

To make this perform you would need to:
1) convert the pointcloud to a low resolution mesh
2) UV map an image/images/360 degrees image onto the mesh

If you want to make it really nice then you could bake a high resolution mesh onto a low resolution mesh in order to generate a normal map ..

 

theres also this plugin, but having several million points starts to slow down with oculus (since it needs to draw them twice)
http://forum.unity3d.com/threads/released-point-cloud-viewer-tools.240536/

other solutions, using MeshLab (free program) to process point cloud data, convert to mesh, export to unity. *Note that exporting from meshlab to .obj didnt seem to include vertex colors in unity when tested last time:
http://forum.unity3d.com/threads/newbie-need-help-adding-texture-to-my-mesh.311962/

 

I've done the procedure suggested by mgear with Matterport camera and the results are ok.

(see here for example)

 

The scanner produces a database file in format called "imp" in the Leica Cyclone software. Leica Cyclone is a 3D point cloud processing software.
From this software you can export to varius file formats including .pts . But I dont know which format would be best/possible to import into Unity.

 

Thanks! I know that the scanner software can produce "photographic" images in two ways. With the first method it maps the colors from the camera images onto each point, producing a colored point cloud. It has its limitations of course but it looks quite cool on screen. The second is as you suggest, it can create a mesh and then map the photos onto the mesh.

What file format of the mesh can Unity import? How do I import it?
And finally how do I export a file that I can use with oculus?

Sorry for my lack of knowledge...

 

For example:
FBX
OBJ

 

See previous reply for format.
Edit: See post from mgear below if you've got a new version of Unity (5.1 and above).

(Obsolete: To get it to work with oculus you need to go to oculusvr.com and download the sdk for unity)

 

You can also enable VR support from player settings, then no need to import unity package.
Just need the pc runtime from oculus (v0.8 in latest versions).



http://docs.unity3d.com/Manual/VROverview.html