Video to Point Cloud Converter

Convert videos into 3D point clouds using COLMAP.

Description

This project extracts frames from a video, runs COLMAP to create a point cloud, and saves it in PLY format. The resulting point cloud can be imported into anything you need for visualization and further manipulation.

"I've been keeping a journal to provide more context as I learn how to make this." - zbuhrer

Installation

I'll elaborate on these steps in the future, but the quick 'n easy way to get this set up is as follows:

• Install COLMAP, referring to their instructions.
• Clone this project from Git:

  git clone https://github.com/zbuhrer/pointcloud_converter

• Create and activate a virtual environment (Linux/BSD environments):

  python3 -m venv venv
  source venv/bin/activate

• Install dependencies (while inside venv!):

  pip3 install -r requirements.txt

• Put your mp4 video file in the root of this project (rename it to video_input.mp4) — refer to this documentation for best practices.
• Start the application:

  python3 .

Your terminal window will produce a lot of output for several hours. Refer to the roadmap below if you think of something this isn't doing yet.

Roadmap

• Let the user select filters to apply or ignore
• Better logging/console output so it's more clear what it's doing
  • Hey how about a loading bar at least?
• System requirements documentation
  • Need to work on a table of stats for models that I've extracted so they can be studied
• UI?
  • Should this be a console-only app? I've never made a GUI before, that could be fun!

License

This project is licensed under the Apache License 2.0 - see the LICENSE file for details.