User manual

FastSCAN 39
Matlab (.mat) A binary data file format used by The MathWorks MATLAB. Sup-
ports cloud of points or triangle mesh data, both with optional vertex normal vec-
tors or pseudo gray-scale values. The file will contain five MATLAB variables at
most:
• Points: A 3-by-N matrix where each column is a vertex location.
• Normals: A 3-by-N matrix giving the vertex normal vector for each vertex.
• Facets: A 3-by-M matrix where each column defines a triangle as three indexes
into the list of Points.
• Info: A string containing information about the file.
• Albedo: A 1-by-N matrix giving the surface pseudo-grayscale brightness for each
point in Points.
Note: N = points, M = facets.
Stanford Polygon File Format (.ply) Also know as the Stanford Triangle Format,
this format was principally designed to store 3D data from laser scanners. It describes
a single object as a series of flat polygons and can be saved as cloud of points or
triangle mesh, in both binary or text formats. The .ply file can also be saved with
optional vertex normal vectors or pseudo gray-scale values.
Stereo Lithography (.stl) A common format that supports triangle mesh.
The FastSCAN
TM
program supports both text and binary .stl files (binary is faster and
creates a much smaller file).
Virtual Reality Modeling Language (.wrl) VRML is a scene description language
common on the Internet. There are different versions of VRML; the FastSCAN
TM
pro-
gram produces the older 1.0 version, which is still widely supported. Generated files
contain a single triangle mesh object and a camera object based on the current view.
Visualization Toolkit (.vtk) Supports both cloud of points and triangle mesh. Only
the ASCII file format is supported (text files).
Wavefront Object (.obj) The file format used by the Alias|Wavefront software and
widely supported by other programs. This is a text file that supports cloud of points
and triangle mesh, the latter with optional vertex normal and pseudo gray-scale
values.
Note: Not all third party software supports color information with .obj files.