by Jakub Uhlík·Workflow
Images © Jakub Uhlík. Used for product review; image policy.
Point Cloud Visualizer earns its place in the superhive library for covering colored point clouds end to end, spanning many read and write formats, viewport display, editing filters and conversion to Blender mesh data. It carries a 5-star rating from 18 reviews.
Point Cloud Visualizer is a Blender add-on for working with colored point cloud files. It can display, edit, filter, render, convert, generate and export point clouds, showing hundreds of millions of colored points in the 3D viewport, limited only by system and GPU memory. Any Blender object can act as a container for the points, which stay outside Blender data until converted, for maximal performance.
It reads PLY, LAS/LAZ, E57, PCD and text-based formats such as PTS, XYZ, TXT and CSV, and writes PLY, LAS/LAZ, E57 and PTS through a custom reader and writer optimized for point data. It also loads, edits and writes 3D Gaussian Splatting PLY files, can reconstruct point colors from spherical harmonics, and convert them to a Blender mesh rendered in Cycles to approximate the 3DGS effect. Editing covers modal selection cleanup, retopology tools that snap vertices to points, clipping plane gizmos and a range of filters.
Built-in GPU rendering outputs to image or image sequence with a viewport or transparent background. Points convert to Blender mesh and VDB volume data for Geometry Nodes and any render engine, and PLY sequences support playback, batch convert, filter and export.
Point Cloud Visualizer is best for working with large colored point clouds in Blender, from importing scan, lidar, photogrammetry and Gaussian splatting data through editing, filtering and conversion to rendering and export.
Point Cloud Visualizer is completely free to download and use.
Point Cloud Visualizer runs on Windows (x64), Linux (x64) and macOS (arm64 and x64), and ships as an extension with all required libraries bundled. Because the libraries are packaged with it, you don't need to gather separate dependencies for the supported platforms before use. It's built to run inside Blender. For the most current platform details and installation guidance, check the developer's page and the Point Cloud Visualizer documentation.
Point Cloud Visualizer reads PLY, LAS/LAZ, E57, PCD and text-based formats including PTS, XYZ, TXT and CSV, and writes PLY, LAS/LAZ, E57 and PTS. It uses a custom PLY reader and writer optimized for point data and performance. Beyond standard point clouds, it also loads, edits and writes 3D Gaussian Splatting PLY files. For the full, current list of supported formats, refer to the developer's page and documentation.
Point Cloud Visualizer supports loading, editing and writing 3D Gaussian Splatting PLY files. It can reconstruct point colors from spherical harmonics and convert the data to a Blender mesh that renders in the Cycles engine, approximating the 3DGS effect. This lets splat files fit into the same display, editing and export workflow as other point cloud data. For specifics on the reconstruction and conversion steps, see the developer's documentation.
Point Cloud Visualizer is listed as free here, though licensing can change, so confirm current terms on the developer's page. The developer offers Standard and Pro editions; the Pro edition adds a Tiles mode for loading huge datasets stored across multiple files with real LOD and octree, along with measure tools and shading options tuned for datasets without colors. Support and product updates are provided by Jakub Uhlík.
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