Add ground filtering plugin (CSF) to the official repository of cloudcompare

[wpqjbzwm]

Hi, Daniel. Thank you for the corrections.

By the way, we are pleased to announce that CSF can be used in Python environment now. More details can be found here, https://www.researchgate.net/project/CS ... Simulation

[wpqjbzwm]

Investigating the performances of commercial and non-commercial software for ground filtering of UAV-based point clouds

In the above paper, CSF was compared with the ground filtering algorithms of several softwares including Photoscan and Global Mapper. In the paper, they reported:

The results showed that the CSF algorithm presented the best filtering results for both test sites with Total Errors of 6% and 4.5% in the sites 1 and 2, respectively.

Performance analyses revealed that the recently introduced CSF algorithm yielded the minimum Total Errors in both test sites (see Table 4).

it was easier to find the optimum parameters for the CSF.

The main advantage of this algorithm is that it uses very few easy-to-set parameters.

Considering the performance and time efficiency, the freely available CSF algorithm as found to be the optimum ground filtering algorithm for UAV-based point clouds.

[wpqjbzwm]

CSF is integrated in commercial photogrammetry software - 3DF Zephyr

https://www.3dflow.net/

3DF Zephyr is a photogrammetry software, like photoscan and visalsfm. It is fast and easy-to-use.
3DF Zephyr Free can process 50 photos.

Now CSF is integrated in the newest version 4.0. You can find it in two ways. When you export DTM or select point clouds by choosing method of Cloth Simulation. Enjoy it.

[Daniel Carneiro]

Please! the plugin is not more disponible in Cloude Compare? It is not active in version 2.9.1. It is only in list but no way to active then.

[daniel]

Have you selected/highlighted a cloud (and not the container by the way)?

[Daniel Carneiro]

Sorry, I did not that. The filter is now fine. Thanks.

[wpqjbzwm]

Hi, all. Recently, we published a paper which extends CSF to deal with the photon point cloud of ICESat-2 (LiDAR mounted on a Satellite). The result is more accurate than NASA ALT08 product.

EP4_4.png (586.37 KiB) Viewed 8952 times

Chang B, Xiong H, Li Y, et al. ALCSF: An adaptive and anti-noise filtering method for extracting ground and top of canopy from ICESat-2 LiDAR data along single tracks[J]. ISPRS Journal of Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing. 2024, 215: 80-98.

This paper can be downloaded for free before August 24th, 2024. Feedback and citations are welcome.
https://authors.elsevier.com/c/1jNW73I9x1qnnC

We have integrated this algorithm into the EasyPoint software and have granted it for free use. If you wish to use this algorithm, please download the software and apply for authorization from the following website:
EasyPoint website: https://easypoint.xyz
Our software can directly process the raw data downloaded from the ICESat-2 website. For specific operations, please refer to the user guide provided on our website. If it is useful, please cite our paper.

The EasyPoint Forestry version is also available for download from this site. It enables automatic processing of forest plot point cloud and includes an enhanced CSF algorithm that operates 10 times faster than most other software options.

[daniel]

Interesting... but I have an issue with the Easypoint software itself. We've already been warned about this software. It seems to use some CloudCompare components (3D view, icons, etc.) while being closed source. This would infringe the GPL license.

Are you in contact with the Easypoint developers? Can you help us get access to the source code of this application? That's a requirement to be able to reuse GPL code.

[wpqjbzwm]

hi daniel，

EasyPoint is something we have developed independently from the ground up. You might have confused EasyPoint with other software. Some software simply modifies CloudCompare, and we despise such actions. You can visit http://easypoint.xyz to view the software interface, or download and run it yourself for comparison.

We only engage in original works, such as CSF and ALCSF. If we use certain libraries or software, we will abide by the rules. You might remember, we rewrote part of the CSF plugin code to avoid copyright issues with CGAL several years ago.

[daniel]

Ok, I prefer to be sure, because this capture for instance is a little bit troubling:

whatisEP.png (534.74 KiB) Viewed 8547 times

- The icons to select the camera default orientation with a similar orange
- The 3D view, with the trihedron as 3 simple red, green and blue lines, the crosshair in the middle, etc.

Of course it's not a unique design, but it's disturbing to see a point cloud software that mimics CloudCompare too closely. The others we've encountered in the past have all been using CloudCompare's code. 4 projects have been detected already: 1 Japanese and 3 Chinese commercial products. Only 2 have fixed the license infrigement issue so far. See https://www.cloudcompare.org/release/notes/20240214/, at the end, for the 2 others. You'll understand that I'm on the lookout now.

In a way it means that CloudCompare is a reference now ...