Point-Cloud Scans

Many 3D scanners export a .ply file that holds only points — no faces at all. Vertexix can't retopologize points directly, so when you open a .ply like that it builds a surface from the points as part of the import. You open the file the same way as any other model (see Projects & File Types); there is no separate command or option to switch on.

Which files take this route

Only a .ply whose header lists points but no faces is treated as a point cloud. A .ply that already has faces imports as an ordinary mesh, exactly like any other model. Other file types are never reconstructed.

Vertexix reads the point positions, plus two optional attributes when the file has them:

Point attribute	How it is used
Normals	Used as-is to tell the reconstruction which side of the surface is outside. Not required: if the file has none (or its normal values are all zero), Vertexix estimates them from each point's neighbours and orients them consistently before reconstructing.
Colours	Kept. They are carried onto the reconstructed surface as vertex colours.

A scan needs at least four points; anything less fails to import.

How the surface is built

The points are turned into a surface with Poisson reconstruction, which fits one smooth, closed (watertight) surface through the whole cloud. Two things follow from that:

• The result is a dense triangle mesh, not a clean model — it is a starting point for retopology.
• Because the surface is always closed, areas the scanner never saw (the underside of an object on a turntable, for example) get filled in with smooth “bubble” geometry.

What you get

The reconstructed surface becomes an ordinary Loaded Mesh. It has a single material named Scan, no UV map and no textures, and vertex colours if the scan had colours. From here everything works as it does for any imported model: select the Scan material, remesh it into clean topology (see Remeshing a Model), make a UV map, and bake.

While the model finishes loading, the status bar briefly shows a one-line summary of what was done, for example the number of points, the resulting vertex and triangle counts, the reconstruction depth and the time taken. It also notes when normals had to be estimated and when point colours were kept. The same summary is written to the log if logging is on.

If the reconstruction fails, the Import Failed dialog explains why — for example, that the cloud is too sparse for the requested depth or its normals are inconsistent.

Tuning the reconstruction

There are no on-screen controls for the reconstruction yet. Two command-line options adjust it; they apply to every point-cloud scan opened in that session (see Appendix: Command-Line Options):

Option	What it does	Default
--poisson-depth N	Detail level of the reconstruction. Higher values resolve finer detail but are much slower and use far more memory; lower values are quick but blurrier. Limited to 2–12.	9
--poisson-trim F	Removes the least-supported part of the surface — the bubble geometry over unscanned areas. F is a fraction between 0 and 1: 0.05 trims the flimsiest 5%. If the trim would remove the entire surface, the import fails and asks you to lower it.	0 (keep everything)