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view

Display point cloud

Description

example

view(player,ptCloud) displays a point cloud in the pcplayer figure window, player. The points, locations, and colors are stored in the ptCloud object.

view(player,xyzPoints) displays the points of a point cloud at the locations specified by the xyzPoints matrix. The color of each point is determined by the z value.

view(player,xyzPoints,color) displays a point cloud with colors specified by color.

view(player,xyzPoints,colorMap) displays a point cloud with colors specified by colorMap.

Examples

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Load point cloud.

ptCloud = pcread("teapot.ply");

Define a rotation matrix and 3-D transform.

x = pi/180; 
R = [ cos(x) sin(x) 0 0
     -sin(x) cos(x) 0 0
      0         0   1 0
      0         0   0 1];

tform = affinetform3d(R);

Compute x, y, and z limits that ensure that the rotated teapot is not clipped.

lower = min([ptCloud.XLimits ptCloud.YLimits]);
upper = max([ptCloud.XLimits ptCloud.YLimits]);
  
xlimits = [lower upper];
ylimits = [lower upper];
zlimits = ptCloud.ZLimits;

Create the player and customize player axis labels.

player = pcplayer(xlimits,ylimits,zlimits);

xlabel(player.Axes,"X (m)");
ylabel(player.Axes,"Y (m)");
zlabel(player.Axes,"Z (m)");

Rotate the teapot around the z-axis.

for i = 1:360      
    ptCloud = pctransform(ptCloud,tform);     
    view(player,ptCloud);     
end

Figure Point Cloud Player contains an axes object. The axes object with xlabel X (m), ylabel Y (m) contains an object of type scatter.

Input Arguments

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Point cloud, specified as a pointCloud object. The object contains the locations, intensities, and RGB colors to render the point cloud.

Point Cloud PropertyColor Rendering Result
Location only Maps the z-value to a color value in the current color map.
Location and IntensityMaps the intensity to a color value in the current color map.
Location and ColorUse provided color.
Location, Intensity, and ColorUse provided color.

Player for visualizing 3-D point cloud data streams, specified as a pcplayer object.

Point cloud x, y, and z locations, specified as either an M-by-3 or an M-by-N-by-3 numeric matrix. The M-by-N-by-3 numeric matrix is commonly referred to as an organized point cloud. The xyzPoints numeric matrix contains M or M-by-N [x,y,z] points. The z values in the numeric matrix, which generally correspond to depth or elevation, determine the color of each point.

Color for points in the point cloud, specified as a 1-by-3-RGB vector, an M-by-3 matrix, an M-by-N-by-3 matrix, a short color name, or a long color name. For details on color values, see the Color Value table.

  • For single or double datatype, the Color RGB value must be specified in the range [0, 1].

  • For uint8 datatype, the Color RGB value must be specified in the range [0, 255].

  • The function stores the Color value as either an M-by-3 or M-by-N-by-3. If you specify the color as a string or a 1-by-3 vector, the function converts it to one of these dimensions.

ColorFormatExample
Specify one color for all points

short or long color name

"r"

"red"

1-by-3 vector (RGB triplet)

[255 0 0]1-by-3 grid, with columns labeled r,g,b respectively.

Specify a color for each point

cell array of character vectors

["red","yellow","blue"]

M-by-3 matrix, as a list of RGB values

255 0 0
255 0 0
0 255 255
M-by-3 grid, with columns labeled r,g,b respectively.

M-by-N-by-3 matrix for an organized point cloud containing RGB values for each point, where M-by-N is the dimension of the point cloud.

M-by-N-by3 grid, with 3 m-by-n matrices labeled r,g,b respectively.

Point cloud color map for points, specified as one of:

  • M-by-1 vector

  • M-by-N matrix

Points InputColor SelectionValid Values of C
xyzPointsDifferent color for each pointVector or M-by-N matrix. The matrix must contain values that are linearly mapped to a color listed in the current colormap.

More About

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Color Value

Color NameShort NameRGB TripletAppearance
"red""r"[1 0 0]

Sample of the color red

"green""g"[0 1 0]

Sample of the color green

"blue""b"[0 0 1]

Sample of the color blue

"cyan" "c"[0 1 1]

Sample of the color cyan

"magenta""m"[1 0 1]

Sample of the color magenta

"yellow""y"[1 1 0]

Sample of the color yellow

"black""k"[0 0 0]

Sample of the color black

"white""w"[1 1 1]

Sample of the color white

Version History

Introduced in R2015b