Efficient Non-Linear Editing of Large Point Clouds

Abstract

Editing 3D models is often performed on triangular meshes. We generalize editing operations based on differential coordinates to work on point clouds without explicit connectivity information. This allows a point cloud to be interpreted as a surface or volumetric body upon which physically plausible deformations can be applied. Our multiresolution approach allows for a real-time editing experience of large point clouds with 1M points without any offline processing. We tested our method on a range of synthetic and real world data sets acquired by laser scanner. All of them were interactively editable and produced intuitive deformation results within few minutes of editing.