LiDAR cloud point - viewing options

Hi everyone,

Very new here. I uploaded a LiDAR cloud point 3D model to CESIUM today. The uplaod went well and the 3D model populated on the map but it is only showing as an RGB model. In the viewer I have been using, the point cloud is also showing me different kind of visualizations sych as “height”. Any chance you would know if different modes are available for Lidar point cloud visualization in CESIUM?

(I assume that you mainly refer to CesiumJS (and not Cesium For Unreal or Unity) - if this is correct, I’d move this topic into the CesiumJS section).

When you talk about a “viewer”, then this sounds like you have been using a dedicated viewer for point cloud files, like LAS/LAZ. In any case, there may be specialized viewers for certain data sets that offer predefined visualizations.

When you upload a LiDAR model to Cesium ion and it is converted into 3D Tiles, then you can view it in CesiumJS. But CesiumJS is rather a library that can be used to create applications. Therefore, some of the mechanisms for custom visualizations may be a bit more “low-level” than the predefined functions that are offered in existing viewer applications.

It is not yet clear what kind of additional data you want to visualize. It might, for example, be some of the metadata that is usually included in LiDAR data - and some of this data is preserved during the tiling process.

In order to visualize this data, there are two options, roughly speaking: You can use ‘3D Tiles Styles’. An example for the visualization of a temperature attribute that is stored as part of a point cloud is shown in the 3D Tiles Point Cloud Styling Sandcastle. Another option could be Custom Shaders, which are a bit more involved (whether or not you need them for your goals depends on what exactly you want to visualize).