FAQ

PCV License

PCV is released under GNU General Public License, version 2 or later. See LICENSE text file in extension zip for full text.

PCV updates are released on Superhive (Blender Market) for everybody who bought PCV in past since first release of version 1.0 in 2020. Also archive of all past versions is available for download if need to be.

So far I have no plans to change that.

PCV Support

I provide support for everybody who bought PCV on Superhive (Blender Market). To contact me, go to Superhive, log in to your account, go to PCV store page and click Message Creator button.

Platform Compatibility

Windows (x64), Linux (x64) and macOS (arm64 & x64)
macOS x64 (Intel Architecture) version is provided, but not tested

Blender Compatibility

As a general rule, using latest Blender LTS release is the best, at the time of writing it is Blender 4.5 LTS, latest LTS is used for development and will be the most tested Blender version

Blender 4.2.6 LTS or later
Blender 4.3 may not work because issue with installation that has been fixed after its release
Blender 4.4 or later will be compatible, up to Blender 5.0
for Blender 5.1 use distribution zip with -blender-5.1 suffix and see notes on Blender 5.1 bellow

Notes on Blender 5.0

PCV is fully compatible on macOS with Metal gpu backend and on Windows/Linux with OpenGL gpu backend
on Windows/Linux with Vulkan gpu backend, there is minor issue that has been fixed in Blender 5.1 (it is not clear if fix will be backported to Blender 4.5 LTS), this issue affects viewport postprocessing, Tiles shading and modal tools that depends on point selecting, if you switch gpu backend to OpenGL and restart Blender, all will be working as intended. Blender 5.1 works fine with Vulkan backend.

Notes on Blender 5.1

Blender 5.1 comes with major changes relevant to extensions, Python version went from 3.11 to 3.13 and Numpy from 1.x to 2.x and all libraries that use compiled code need to be budled for new Python and all of them need to support new Numpy
At the moment, only Open3D is not yet officially released for Python 3.13 and it is not bundled in PCV so features that depends on Open3D will not work
To install PCV in Blender 5.1, you need to download and install distribution zip for Blender 5.1 (-blender-5.1 suffix), regular distribution zip will refuse to install

Notes on Blender 5.2

When Blender 5.2 LTS will be released, PCV for macOS x64 (Intel Architecture) will no longer be updated and will be available only as legacy version for Blender 4.5 LTS

Are all filters and tools from Standard edition available also in Pro Tiles mode?

No. Tiles mode has its own set of tools. More will come in future updates.

I got warning icons and `Missing vertex normals`, `Missing vertex colors` and `Missing scalars` messages in `Display` panel

Loaded data does not have normals, colors or scalar fields so affected shading options cannot work properly, missing values are substitued by default normal or colors (exact values are in PCV > Load > General).

My LAS/LAZ file is all black even though i know it has colors

Some software may save colors incorrectly as 8bit values per channel (0-255) in 16bit fields (0-65535). LAS specification uses only 16bit colors and 8bit values are very close to zero when interpreted as 16bit, so colors look almost black in viewport. To fix, go PCV > Load > Reader Options, check Force 8-bit Colors and click Reload in PCV > Load panel. File will be reloaded and colors interpreted as 8bit. This will only happen when all color channels values on all points are between 0 and 255 which indicates incorrectly saved LAS/LAZ.

Points are missing when blend file is saved and reopened?

PCV does not store loaded points in blend file because there is no suitable data type available. only PCV settings and path to data file is stored. when blend file is reopened, points need to loaded or imported from linked file again by clicking Draw button.
If you are working with multiple PLY clouds at once, you can use PCV 3d viewport panel (viewport header top right corner: cloud icon) to Draw all PCV instances in scene at once.
Any changes to points made with PCV have to be saved using Export panel to PLY before quiting Blender or loading blend file otherwise will be lost.
Other option is to use Pack option that will automatically convert points to hidden mesh datablock on blend file save and restore on blend file load, but since blender uses only single precision floating point numbers for vertex positions, geolocated point data will lost its precision and cannot be moved exactly back. If you don't need to export points back to "world" locations (i.e. LAS/LAZ or E57 files) you can ignore this limitation.

How to render points in Cycles or Eeveee (with colors)?

Points need to be converted to Blender native data type that can be rendered in engine. Conversion target is mesh vertices with Geometry Nodes to turn them to instances or points, see PCV > Convert panel.
Converting points will create suitable color data and adds basic material using it so colors are preserved and available for render engine.
Mesh instances can be rendered in Cycles and Eevee, points are supported only by Cycles, Eevee converts them internally to mesh before rendering so it can be slow.

Large Datasets

currently, PCV needs to load all points from source file and keep them in system memory
during loading, system memory usage will peak quite high, 4 (and more in some cases) times the runtime usage
for display, PCV need to upload all points that are going to be displayed (you can control amount with PCV > Display > Percentage slider) to gpu memory
to determine approximate maximum number of points your gpu can display at once you can use calculator in PCV preferences (for example 8GB gpu can display ~300M points with default shader and disabled scalars), calculator formula is simple:

ram = 8192  # MB
b = (1024*1024) * ram  # bytes
# default shader uses 3x float32 for point location and 4x float32 for color (rgba)
# float32 takes 4 bytes, hence 3*4 + 4*4 bytes
n = int(b / (12 + 16))
print(n)  # 306783378

trying to display more points (i.e. uploading more data than gpu memory can contain) will result in Blender crash or freeze
when extremely big data need to be loaded and is not required to work with exactly all points, alternative loading methods Every Nth or Slice can be used to reduce number of points during loading

Or consider upgrading to Pro edition which includes Tiles mode to solve issues with large datasets.

Is there a trial version?

No, sorry. it is not possible.

I got an error..

Please let me know "Ask a Question" sidebar button.

Ideal for any bug report would be starting Blender from command line and repeating error situation. Then copy messages from console window, add steps to reproduce it. If it is related to loading a point cloud file include it in report if it is possible.

I'd like to have `X` feature implemented..

Please let me know "Ask a Question" sidebar button. I am always open to suggestions.