{"id":91,"date":"2008-09-19T10:18:45","date_gmt":"2008-09-19T10:18:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.shapeways.com\/blog\/archives\/91-3d-file-format-conversion-and-cleanup-with-meshlab.html"},"modified":"2014-07-03T16:41:12","modified_gmt":"2014-07-03T16:41:12","slug":"3d-file-format-conversion-and-cleanup-with-meshlab","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.shapeways.com\/blog\/3d-file-format-conversion-and-cleanup-with-meshlab","title":{"rendered":"3D file format conversion and cleanup with MeshLab"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\t<\/a>The best things in life are free – here’s one that may not be on your list yet, but it will be soon enough!<\/p>\n

\tMeshLab is an excellent tool to convert and process 3D files: it reads and writes STL, Collada, OBJ, 3DS and a few more. It also contains a large set of filters such as non-manifold face removal and hole closing.<\/p>\n

\tIt is free, open source, and runs on all mainstream operating systems: Windows, OS X and Linux. I love it!<\/p>\n

\tI talked to MeshLab’s creator Paolo Cignoni to find out more about this project.<\/p>\n

Q: Can you tell us a little about yourself?<\/b><\/p>\n

\tA: A senior researcher in a Italian government research institution with a lot of interest about the theoretical aspects of practical Computer Graphics and the practical follow up of Computational Geometry. I proudly belong, since its foundation, to the Visual Computing Laboratory of the ISTI-CNR, one of the most important CG research lab in Italy.<\/p>\n

Q: How would you describe MeshLab to new users?<\/b><\/p>\n

\tA: A versatile, powerful, ever evolving, tool for (mostly) unattended 3D mesh converting, processing, cleaning and repairing. (and that sometimes crashes more than necessary \ud83d\ude42 )<\/p>\n

Q: What made you decide to create MeshLab?<\/b><\/p>\n

\tA: It was the combination of two distinct motivations.<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. In our VCG lab, in the last 10 years, we developed a nice, rich, complex c++ library for 3D mesh processing ( http:\/\/vcg.sf.net<\/a> ) that we have used for all our many research projects, I wanted to have a easy to use tool where the many features of our vcg library could be evident, but I always lacked the will of doing such an effort.<\/li>\n
  2. I regularly teach the advanced Computer Graphics course at the Computer Science department of the University of Pisa. It is a course with a small number of usually smart students; some years ago I become tired of seeing always the same mostly useless 3D projects done by the students so I thought to a system with a very modular plugin based architecture that allowed to students to independently develop small portions of a complex system. From a didactic point of view it was a success. Students are really very motivated to see their “home-work” being something real that last for a long time after the end of the course. In practice it was rather easy to make them work really hard and in a professional way.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    Q: How many people are working on MeshLab? Who are they?<\/b><\/p>\n

    \tA: I have never exactly counted them before now :). According to Ohloh.net at least 42 people committed code to the base, but the real number is probably a bit larger. Students often work in pairs and sometimes they perform all the commits are done with a single account. Most of the developers are students that work on a very focused task for a limited period of time and then maintain it over the time.<\/p>\n

    \tIn the last year a few other very talented developers from all over the world have freely joined to the MeshLab team in the classical wonderful Open Source spirit. I wish to warmly thank them for their precious and significant contributions.<\/p>\n

    Q: Are there any features that are unique to MeshLab and that aren’t offered by other (commercial) programs?<\/b><\/p>\n

    \tA: Initially not so many, probably the users liked a lot the surface simplification tool that is really robust and fast (according to many users much better and faster that the one that you can find in the High-End package like 3ds max, or maya). Now very recently developed CG techniques are being dropped in. I wrote that code more or less 10 years ago, and it was used as basis to the out of core system that simplified the huge Digital Michelangelo Project models.<\/p>\n

    \tAlso 3D scanning pipeline (alignment and merging) is rather good. It has a rather rough interface but its core is very good. The core of that library was used too in a lot of famous projects,
    \n\tJust to cite one, it was used to align and merge the meshes of the Parthenon Project of Paul Debevec.<\/p>\n

    \tIn general the capability of working with very large unstructured meshes is rather rare in most 3D packages.<\/p>\n

    \tBy the way I think that its overall goal of mostly unattended processing, is something that make MeshLab very distinct from most of the other 3D packages that are more oriented on the design\/edit\/build paradigm.<\/p>\n

    Q: Which new features can we expect in the near future?<\/b><\/p>\n

    \tA: More mesh formats supported, More filters, new algorithms for cleaning meshes, tools for offsetting surfaces, more controllable hole filling, retopology tools, new merging algorithms, a lot of stuff for managing color over meshes, expression parsing in the parameters, and finally a command line version of MeshLab for unattended pipelined processing of meshes.<\/p>\n

    \tIn a not so near future, MeshLab will have a really well integrated undo, a redesign of its gui (i got tired of floating windows), and eventually a bit of scriptability.<\/p>\n

    \tcheers<\/p>\n

    \tPaolo<\/p>\n

    Downloading MeshLab<\/h2>\n

    \tDownload MeshLab here<\/a>. On the download page, click ‘download’ and select the right version for your system:<\/p>\n