A Python library of various algorithms and utilities for 3D triangle meshes and point clouds. Currently, mainly bindings to C++ tools from geometry-central.

pip install potpourri3d

The blend includes:

• Mesh and point cloud reading/writing to a few file formats
• Sample a point cloud from a mesh
• Use heat methods to compute distance, parallel transport, logarithmic maps, and more

Potpourri3d is on the pypi package index with precompiled binaries for most configuations. Get it like:

pip install potpourri3d

If none of the precompiled binaries match your system, pip will attempt to compile the library from scratch. This requires cmake and a workng C++ compiler toolchain.

Note: Some bound functions invoke sparse linear solvers internally. The precompiled binaries use Eigen's solvers; using Suitesparse's solvers instead may significantly improve performance & robustness. To get them, locally compile the package on a machine with Suitesparse installed using the command below (relevant docs).

python -m pip install potpourri3d --no-binary potpourri3d

• read_mesh(filename) Reads a mesh from file. Returns numpy matrices V, F, a Nx3 real numpy array of vertices and a Mx3 integer numpy array of 0-based face indices (or Mx4 for a quad mesh, etc).

  • filename the path to read the file from. Currently supports the same file types as geometry-central. The file type is inferred automatically from the path extension.

• write_mesh(V, F, filename) Write a mesh from file. Returns numpy matrices V, F, a Vx3 real array of vertices and a Fx3 integer array of 0-based face indices (or Fx4 for a quad mesh, etc).

  • V a Nx3 real numpy array of vertices
  • F a Mx3 integer numpy array of 0-based face indices (or Mx4 for a quad mesh, etc).
  • filename the path to write the file to. Currently supports the same file types as geometry-central. The file type is inferred automatically from the path extension.