How to generate a point cloud in 3D?

Hello dear community,
I would like to know if there is a fast way to create a cloud in 3D which consists of points. I would like to get something like this:
The points should be written into a simple matrix. Each row should represent one point. Thank you for your help!

 Accepted Answer

Mike Garrity
Mike Garrity on 16 Nov 2015
Edited: Mike Garrity on 16 Nov 2015
This might be a good starting point:
[x,y,z] = ndgrid(1:5:100,1:5:100,1:5:100);
scatter3(x(:),y(:),z(:),'.')
The ndgrid function will return multiple arrays of the same shape with one of its inputs replicated along one dimension of each of its outputs.
The syntax x(:) says to convert that 3D array into a vector.
The scatter3 function takes 3 vectors and plots a marker at the location defined by each row of the three.
The '.' argument to scatter3 tells it to draw a dot, rather than one of the bigger and more complex markers.

6 Comments

Thank you for you help! I will try it out.
Hi Mike, your code is very simple and good. I want to generate a point cloud of a 4 walled surface, similar to a simple room. Can u plzz help me how to go about that.
h = 10; w = 15; d = 12;
hv = linspace(0, h, 30);
wv = linspace(0, w, 30);
dv = linspace(0, d, 30);
[tbx, tby, tbz] = ndgrid(wv, dv, hv([1 end]) );
[lrx, lry, lrz] = ndgrid(wv([1 end]), dv, hv);
[fbx, fby, fbz] = ndgrid(wv, dv([1 end]), hv);
allx = [tbx(:); lrx(:); fbx(:)];
ally = [tby(:); lry(:); fby(:)];
allz = [tbz(:); lrz(:); fbz(:)];
scatter3(allx, ally, allz)
Hi.. Could you please help me in generating a point cloud from the .stl file
Hello RAMYA. I need stl to point cloud transformation. Did you find anything about this ?
Hello you can use meshlabjs(it is online) and upload yor .stl file and then search "sampling" then select poission disk sampling or monto carlo sampling,

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More Answers (1)

faten emad
faten emad on 17 Sep 2018
Hi Mike, your code is very good. I want to generate a point cloud of moving scan camera can you help me?

5 Comments

Can you link to an example image?
If you do not have a time-marked stream of data available, then you would need to have some kind of model of the object and you would need to do the equivalent of raycasting to generate points over time and add them to the pointcloud as you go.
can you help me with the codes?

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