What is Point Cloud?

Point Cloud is a data structure that stores points in three-dimensional space. These points can be used to represent anything from simple geometric shapes to complex models of buildings or landscapes. Point clouds are often used in computer graphics and visualization applications, as they provide a way to represent three-dimensional data in a compact and efficient manner.

3D visualization of point clouds can be performed using various methods, such as surface rendering, point sprites, or volumetric rendering. Surface rendering methods treat the point cloud as a set of polygons and render them using Gouraud shading or phong shading. Point sprite methods draw each point as a textured sprite. Volumetric methods treat the point cloud as a 3D voxel grid and render it using ray casting or shear-warp factorization.