Knowledge
- Converting LAS/LAZ files to textfiles with generated headersOne of the first LAStools features was to export LAS/LAZ to textfiles and import textfiles to LAS/LAZ (las2txt and txt2las). Typically, the format for parsing the textfile is specified in the “-parse” or “-oparse” argument. The parameters of this argument define which properties of a lidar point are exported or imported. With Version 240125, these… Converting LAS/LAZ files to textfiles with generated headers weiterlesen
- Point cloud filtering by HSL and HSV color modelsThe LAStools filter module was already able to filter colors according to RGB values. However, it sometimes makes sense to filter not only for RGB, but also for hue, saturation, and brightness values. Therefore, the HSL and HSV color models are quite common. LAStools now support these color models in filtering points. These are the… Point cloud filtering by HSL and HSV color models weiterlesen
- LAStools @linuxLAStools runs on Windows and Linux. This article describes the features and installation of LAStools for Linux. Features All binaries are 64bit.Multicore (-cores) is supported.BLAST (blast2dem) is available.The „-gui“ option is not available because most users run LAStools@Linux on the command line for batch processing. Installation Download the binaries via a browser or use the… LAStools @linux weiterlesen
- Convert LAS/LAZ Pointcloud to Wavefront OBJ FilesLAS and LAZ are both very common and powerful formats to save pointcloud data. Nevertheless, some users, or programs, may require another point data format. A common general format to save geometric data, for said requirement, is the wavefront OBJ format. Using one of the sample LAZ files of LAStools we will show you how… Convert LAS/LAZ Pointcloud to Wavefront OBJ Files weiterlesen
- Modify LAS/LAZ files via 3D polylinesUntil now LAStools have 2 tools to modify lidar data using shapefiles: las3dpoly covers the missing z dimension. This enables the user to modify points along a 3D-corridor within a LiDAR data file. One possible use for this feature is classifying powerlines. Below you will find an example of how to classify powerlines: The sample… Modify LAS/LAZ files via 3D polylines weiterlesen
- rapidlasso tutorialsThe rapidlasso tutorials are intended to provide an easy introduction to LAStools. To read the tutorials offline please download the tutorials PDF. This huge PDF file (~250 MB) gives you an overview of different aspects of LAStools and how to use the tools. Videos There are a lot of videos about LAStools. This is a… rapidlasso tutorials weiterlesen
- Generating DTM for „fluffy“ Livox MID-40 LiDAR via „median ground“ pointsIn the last article about the Livox MID-40 LiDAR scan of Samara we quality checked the data, aligned the flight lines and cleaned the remaining spurious scan lines. In this article we will process this data into the standard products. A focus will be on generating a smooth „median ground“ surface from the „fluffy“ scanner… Generating DTM for „fluffy“ Livox MID-40 LiDAR via „median ground“ points weiterlesen
- Preparing Drone LiDAR from Snoopy by LidarUSA carrying a Velodyne HDL-32EIn March 2019 I was welcoming Nelson Mattie from LiDAR Latinoamerica to Samara who brought along his versatile Snoopy A-Series scanning system by LidarUSA that is based on the Velodyne HDL-32E scanner. We mounted it to his truck for a mobile scan of the core downtown block, Nelson carried it on his shoulder through „Samara Jungle“ for… Preparing Drone LiDAR from Snoopy by LidarUSA carrying a Velodyne HDL-32E weiterlesen
- Strip Aligning of Drone LiDAR flown with Livox MID-40 over destroyed MangroveSeptember 11th 2020 seemed like a fitting day to hunt down – with a powerful drone – those who destroy our common good. The latest DJI M300 RTK drone came to visit me in Samara, Guanacaste, Costa Rica and it was carrying the gAirHawk GS-MID40 UAV laser scanning system by Geosun featuring the light-weight Livox… Strip Aligning of Drone LiDAR flown with Livox MID-40 over destroyed Mangrove weiterlesen
- Converting Rasters from inefficient ASCII XYZ to more compact LAZ or TIF FormatsThe German state of Brandenburg has recently started to provide many of their basic geospatial data as open data, such as digital ortophotos in TIF and JPG formats, vertical and horizontal control points in gzipped XML format, LOD1 and LOD2 building models in zipped GML format, topographic maps from 1:10000 to 1:100000 in zipped TIF… Converting Rasters from inefficient ASCII XYZ to more compact LAZ or TIF Formats weiterlesen
- Removing Noise from Single Photon LiDAR to Generate a Smooth DTMA while back we had a first look at the Single Photon LiDAR from Leica’s SPL100 sensor (that eventually turned out just to be an SPL99 because one beamlet or one receiver in the 10 by 10 array was broken and did not produce any returns). Today we are taking a closer look at a… Removing Noise from Single Photon LiDAR to Generate a Smooth DTM weiterlesen
- Another European Country Opens LiDAR: Welcome to the Party, Slovakia!We got a little note from Vítězslav Moudrý from CULS pointing out that the Geodesy, Cartography and Cadastre Authority of the Slovak Republic has started releasing LiDAR as open data on their interactive Web portal. Congratulations, Slovakia!!! Welcome to the Open Data Party!!! We managed to download some data starting from this Web portal link and… Another European Country Opens LiDAR: Welcome to the Party, Slovakia! weiterlesen
- Completeness and Correctness of Discrete LiDAR Returns per Laser Pulse firedAgain and again we have preached about the importance of quality checking when you first get your expensive LiDAR data from the vendor or your free LiDAR data from an open data portal. The minimal quality check we usually advocate consists of lasinfo, lasvalidate, lasoverlap, and lasgrid. The information computed by these LAStools can reassure… Completeness and Correctness of Discrete LiDAR Returns per Laser Pulse fired weiterlesen
- Another German State Goes Open LiDAR: SaxonyFinally some really good news out of Saxony. ? After North Rhine-Westphalia and Thuringia released the first significant amounts of open geospatial data in Germany in a one-two punch in January 2017, we now have a third German state opening their entire tax-payer-funded geospatial data holdings to the tax-paying public via a simple and very easy-to-use… Another German State Goes Open LiDAR: Saxony weiterlesen
- National Open LiDAR Strategy of Latvia humiliates Germany, Austria, and other European „Closed Data“ StatesLatvia, officially the Republic of Latvia, is a country in the Baltic region of Northern Europe has around 2 million inhabitants, a territory of 65 thousand square kilometers and – since recently – also a fabulous open LiDAR policy. Here is a list of 65939 tiles in LAS format available for free download that cover… National Open LiDAR Strategy of Latvia humiliates Germany, Austria, and other European „Closed Data“ States weiterlesen
- Removing Low Noise in LiDAR Points with Median Ground SurfaceRecently a user of LAStools asked a question in our user forum about how to classify LiDAR data that contains lots of low noise. A sample screen shot of the user’s failed attempt to correctly classify the noise using lasnoise and the ground with lasground is shown below: red points are noise, brown points are… Removing Low Noise in LiDAR Points with Median Ground Surface weiterlesen
- Clean DTM from Agisoft Photogrammetric Points of Urban SceneWe occasionally get permission to distribute a nice data sets and blog about how to best process it with LAStools because this gets around having to pay our „outrageous“ consulting fees. (-: This time we received a nice photogrammetric point cloud of the Tafawa Balewa Square in Lagos Island, Lagos, Nigeria. This area is part… Clean DTM from Agisoft Photogrammetric Points of Urban Scene weiterlesen
- Smooth DTM from Drone LiDAR off Velodyne HDL 32A mounted on DJI M600 UAVRecently we attempted to do a small LiDAR survey by drone for a pet project of our CEO in our „code and surf camp“ here in Samara, Costa Rica. But surveying is difficult when you are a novice and we ran into a trajectory issue. The dramatic „wobbles“ were entirely our fault, but fortunately our… Smooth DTM from Drone LiDAR off Velodyne HDL 32A mounted on DJI M600 UAV weiterlesen
- No Sugarcoating: Sweet LiDAR from RiCOPTER carrying VUX-1UAV over SugarcaneRecently we saw an interesting LiDAR data set talked about on social media by Chad Netto from Chustz Surveying in New Roads, Louisiana and asked for a copy. It is a LiDAR scan of a sugarcane plantation in Assumption Parish, Louisiana carried out with the VUX-1UAV by RIEGL mounted onto a RiCOPTER and guided by… No Sugarcoating: Sweet LiDAR from RiCOPTER carrying VUX-1UAV over Sugarcane weiterlesen
- Digital Pothole Removal: Clean Road Surface from Noisy Pix4D Point CloudHow to generate a clean Digital Terrain Model (DTM) from point clouds that were generated with the image matching techniques implemented in various photogrammetry software packages like those from Pix4D, AgiSoft, nframes, DroneDeploy and others has become an ever more frequent inquiry. There are many other blog posts on the topic that you can peruse as… Digital Pothole Removal: Clean Road Surface from Noisy Pix4D Point Cloud weiterlesen
- Scripting LAStools to Create a Clean DTM from Noisy Photogrammetric Point CloudA recent inquiry by Drone Deploy in the LAStools user forum gave us access to a nice photogrammetric point cloud for the village of Fillongley in the North Warwickshire district of England. They voted „Leave“ with a whopping 66.9% according to the EU referendum results by the BBC. Before we say “Good riddance, Fillongley!” we EU-abuse this… Scripting LAStools to Create a Clean DTM from Noisy Photogrammetric Point Cloud weiterlesen
- Complete LiDAR Processing Pipeline: from raw Flightlines to final ProductsThis tutorial serves as an example for a complete end-to-end workflow that starts with raw LiDAR flightlines (as they may be delivered by a vendor) to final classified LiDAR tiles and derived products such as raster DTM, DSM, and SHP files with contours, building footprint and vegetation layers. The three example flightlines we are using… Complete LiDAR Processing Pipeline: from raw Flightlines to final Products weiterlesen
- New Step-by-Step Tutorial for Velodyne Drone LiDAR from Snoopy by LidarUSAThe folks from Harris Aerial gave us LiDAR data from a test-flight of one of their drones, the Carrier H4 Hybrid HE (with a 5kg maximum payload and a retail price of US$ 28,000), carrying a Snoopy A series LiDAR system from LidarUSA in the countryside near Huntsville, Alabama. The laser scanner used by the Snoopy A series is a… New Step-by-Step Tutorial for Velodyne Drone LiDAR from Snoopy by LidarUSA weiterlesen
- Three Videos from Full Day Workshop on LiDAR at IIST Trivandrum in IndiaThree videos from a full day workshop on LiDAR processing at the Department of Earth and Space Sciences of the Indian Institute of Space Science and Technology (IIST) in Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala, India held in October 2017 that was organized by Dr. A. M. Ramiya who we thank very much for the invitation and for being… Three Videos from Full Day Workshop on LiDAR at IIST Trivandrum in India weiterlesen
- First Look with LAStools at LiDAR from Hovermap Drone by CSIROLast December we had a chance to visit the team of Dr. Stefan Hrabar at CSIRO in Pullenvale near Brisbane who work on a drone LiDAR system called Hovermap. This SLAM-based system is mainly developed for the purpose of autonomous flight and exploration of GPS-denied environments such as buildings, mines and tunnels. But as the SLAM algorithm… First Look with LAStools at LiDAR from Hovermap Drone by CSIRO weiterlesen
- Processing Drone LiDAR from YellowScan’s Surveyor, a Velodyne Puck based SystemPoints clouds from UAVs have become a common sight. Cheap consumer drones equipped with cameras produce points from images with increasing quality as photogrammetry software is improving. But vegetation is always a show stopper for point clouds generated from imagery data. Only an active sensing technique such as laser scanning can penetrate through the vegetation… Processing Drone LiDAR from YellowScan’s Surveyor, a Velodyne Puck based System weiterlesen
- Removing Excessive Low Noise from Dense-Matching Point CloudsPoint clouds produced with dense-matching by photogrammetry software such as SURE, Pix4D, or Photoscan can include a fair amount of the kind of „low noise“ as seen below. Low noise causes trouble when attempting to construct a Digital Terrain Model (DTM) from the points as common algorithm for classifying points into ground and non-ground points –… Removing Excessive Low Noise from Dense-Matching Point Clouds weiterlesen
- Integrating External Ground Points in Forests to Improve DTM from Dense-Matching PhotogrammetryThe biggest problem of generating a Digital Terrain Model (DTM) from the photogrammetric point clouds that are produced from aerial imagery with dense-matching software such as SURE, Pix4D, or Photoscan is dense vegetation: when plants completely cover the terrain not a single point is generated on the ground. This is different for LiDAR point clouds… Integrating External Ground Points in Forests to Improve DTM from Dense-Matching Photogrammetry weiterlesen
- Plots to Stands: Producing LiDAR Vegetation Metrics for Imputation CalculationsSome professionals in remote sensing find LAStools a useful tool to extract statistical metrics from LiDAR that are used to make estimations about a larger area of land from a small set of sample plots. Common applications are prediction of the timber volume or the above-ground biomass for entire forests based on a number of representative plots where… Plots to Stands: Producing LiDAR Vegetation Metrics for Imputation Calculations weiterlesen
- Leaked: „Classified LiDAR“ of Pentagon in LAS 1.4 FormatLiDAR leaks have happened! Black helicopters are in the sky! A few days ago a tiny tweet leaked the online location of „classified LiDAR“ for Washington, DC. This LiDAR really is „classified“ and includes an aerial scan of the Pentagon. For rogue scientists world-wide we offer a secret download link. It links to a file code-named ‚pentagon.laz‚ that contains the 8,044,789 „classified“… Leaked: „Classified LiDAR“ of Pentagon in LAS 1.4 Format weiterlesen
- NRW Open LiDAR: Merging Points into Proper LAS FilesIn the first part of this series we downloaded, compressed, and viewed some of the newly released open LiDAR data for the state of North Rhine-Westphalia. In the second part we look at how to merge the multiple point clouds provided back into single LAS or LAZ files that are as proper as possible. Follow along with… NRW Open LiDAR: Merging Points into Proper LAS Files weiterlesen
- NRW Open LiDAR: Download, Compression, ViewingUPDATE: (March 6th): Second part „merging Bonn into proper LAS files“ This is the first part of a series on how to process the newly released open LiDAR data for the entire state of North Rhine-Westphalia that was announced a few days ago. Again, kudos to OpenNRW for being the most progressive open data state in Germany. You can follow… NRW Open LiDAR: Download, Compression, Viewing weiterlesen
- Creating a Better DTM from Photogrammetic Points by Avoiding ShadowsAt INTERGEO 2016 in Hamburg, the guys from Aerowest GmbH shared with us a small photogrammetric point cloud from the city of Soest that had been generated with the SURE dense-matching software from nFrames. We want to test whether – using LAStools – we can generate a decent DTM from these points that are essentially a gridded DSM. If this… Creating a Better DTM from Photogrammetic Points by Avoiding Shadows weiterlesen
- Fixing Intensity Differences between Flightlines („quick and dirty“)Visiting our users on-site, such as last week at Mariano Marcos State University in Ilocos Norte in the Philippines, we sometimes come across situations as pictured below where the intensity values of the returns of one flightline are drastically different from that of other flightlines. Using intensity rasters with such dark strips as an additional input… Fixing Intensity Differences between Flightlines („quick and dirty“) weiterlesen
- Generating Spike-Free Digital Surface Models from LiDARA Digital Surface Model (DSM) represents the elevation of the landscape including all vegetation and man-made objects. An easy way to generate a DSM raster from LiDAR is to use the highest elevation value from all points falling into each grid cell. However, this „binning“ approach only works when then the resolution of the LiDAR is higher than the resolution… Generating Spike-Free Digital Surface Models from LiDAR weiterlesen
- Create proper LAS 1.4 files with LAStools (for free)So your LiDAR processing workflow produces beautiful LAS or LAZ output. You think the files are nothing short of perfect. But they are in LAS 1.2 format and the tender document explicitly requests delivery in the latest LAS 1.4 format. The free and open source las2las module of LAStools – also known as the Swiss Army knife… Create proper LAS 1.4 files with LAStools (for free) weiterlesen
- Use Buffers when Processing LiDAR in Tiles !!!We often process LiDAR in tiles for two reasons: first, to keep the number of points per file low and use main memory efficient, and second, to speed up the computation with parallel tile processing and keep all cores of a modern CPU busy. However, it is very (!!!) important to take the necessary precautions to avoid „edge artifacts“… Use Buffers when Processing LiDAR in Tiles !!! weiterlesen
- Full Day Course on Video: LAStools for ForestryUnscripted complications but lasnoise saves the day Running LAStools via QGIS and ArcGIS toolboxes More on forestry application and intro to lascanopy Power and ease of batch scripts (once written)
- Rasterizing Perfect Canopy Height Models from LiDARIn literature you sometimes read „we generated a Canopy Height Models (CHM) and then did this and that“ without the process that was used to create the CHM being described in detail. One approach computes the CHM as a difference between DSM and DTM: create a DTM from the ground returns and a DSM from the first… Rasterizing Perfect Canopy Height Models from LiDAR weiterlesen
- Using LAStools on Mac OS X with „Wine“[contributed by guest blogger Yuriy Czoli] If you want to use LAStools on a Mac running OS X you will have to do some preparations. This is a brief introduction to get you up and running with LAStools on a Mac in the terminal. You may have heard that you can use „Wine“ to run LAStools on… Using LAStools on Mac OS X with „Wine“ weiterlesen
- Removal of Cloud Returns With a Coarse DTMFlying LiDAR in regions with frequent cloud cover presents a significant challenge. If flight plan constraints do not allow to stay below all of the clouds then some of them will be scanned from above. For denser clouds this often means that all of the laser’s energy gets reflected or absorbed by the cloud and no returns… Removal of Cloud Returns With a Coarse DTM weiterlesen
- Six New Video Tutorials on LAStoolsWhat is part of the LAStools distribution? Cross-sections and editing points with lasview Overview of LAStools capabilities Details on different LAStools modules LAStools Pipelines as ArcGIS and QGIS toolboxes Quality Checking LiDAR data
- Preparing raw LiDAR for efficient (online) distributionOn August 14th, Prof. David Pyle tweeted about raw LiDAR being publically available for the vulcanic island Nea Kameni and its little sibling Palea Kameni that are part of the Santorini caldera in Greece. A big „kudos“ to all those like Prof. Pyle who share raw LiDAR data online for all to download – be it for transparent research, as an open data… Preparing raw LiDAR for efficient (online) distribution weiterlesen
- Density and Spacing of LiDARRecently I worked with LiDAR from an Optech Gemini scanner in the Philippines and with LiDAR from a RIEGL Q680i scanner in Thailand. The two devices scan the terrain below with a very different pattern: the Optech uses an oscillating mirror producing zig-zag scan lines, whereas the RIEGL uses a rotating polygon producing parallel scan lines.… Density and Spacing of LiDAR weiterlesen
- Tutorial: editing LAS or LAZ files „by hand“ with lasviewThis tutorial describes how to manually edit LiDAR using the new inspection and editing functionality available in ‚lasview.exe‘ with the latest release of LAStools (version 140301). We will work with the familiar ‚fusa.laz‘ sample LiDAR data set from the LAStools distribution that was recently reported to have shown strange symptoms assumed to be side-effects of the LAZ… Tutorial: editing LAS or LAZ files „by hand“ with lasview weiterlesen
- Recovering Flight Lines in FijiRecently rapidlasso GmbH gave a workshop on LiDAR processing with LAStools at SOPEC in Suva, Fiji following the 2013 Pacific GIS and RS user conference. In the exercises we used LiDAR from the Nadi and Ba basins that had been flown in early 2012 by Network Mapping using helicopters with funding from the World Bank. For checking… Recovering Flight Lines in Fiji weiterlesen
- Tutorial: derivative productionThis is the final part of a three-part tutorial on how to use LAStools to implement a pipeline that (1) quality checks a newly received set of raw LiDAR flight strips, (2) tiles and prepares the LiDAR for subsequent exploitation, and (3) generates raster and vector derivatives from the LiDAR points such as DTMs, DSMs,… Tutorial: derivative production weiterlesen
- Tutorial: LiDAR preparationThis is part two of a three-part tutorial on how to use LAStools to implement a pipeline that (1) quality checks a newly received set of raw LiDAR flight strips, (2) tiles and prepares the LiDAR for subsequent exploitation, and (3) generates raster and vector derivatives such as DTMs, DSMs, building footprints, and iso-contours with… Tutorial: LiDAR preparation weiterlesen
- how to install LAStools toolbox in QGISThis post is obsolete. Please see the updated blog entry: LAStools as QGIS plugin The more complex installation instructions are only relevant for older QGIS versions. Starting with QGIS 2.10 or newer you can skip directly to step 4 and disregard most of step 6: We had an ArcGIS LiDAR processing toolbox since April 2012 and now we have one… how to install LAStools toolbox in QGIS weiterlesen
- ArcGIS LAStools toolbox for LiDAR processingThis article is obsolete. Please see New Plugin: LAStools for ArcGIS Pro In recent days more and more users are discovering the LAStools toolbox that adds powerful LiDAR processing capabilities to ArcGIS versions 9.3, 10.0, 10.2, and 10.2 allowing you to exploit your LiDAR data in the most sophisticated manner through the familiar toolbox interface (see… ArcGIS LAStools toolbox for LiDAR processing weiterlesen
- Tutorial: quality checkingThis is part one of a three-part tutorial on how to use LAStools to implement a pipeline that (1) quality checks a newly received set of raw LiDAR flight strips, (2) tiles and prepares the LiDAR for subsequent exploitation, and (3) generates raster and vector derivatives such as DTMs, DSMs, building footprints, and iso-contours with… Tutorial: quality checking weiterlesen
- workshop at UNB Fredericton: LiDAR Processing with LAStoolsAfter attending Silvilaser 2012 in Vancouver and giving a keynote on „The Story of LAStools“, I had a stop over in Halifax and drove a cute little Fiat 500 convertible on a perfect Indian summer fall day to UNB Fredericton where Patrick Adda had organized a half-day workshop on LiDAR Processing with LAStools. Here is… workshop at UNB Fredericton: LiDAR Processing with LAStools weiterlesen
- LiDAR processing with LAStools in the Canary islandsOn my way to the FunGIS LiDAR workshop in Cairns, I stopped in Adelaide to visit Airborne Research Australia. Flinders University recorded my talk on the capabilities for LiDAR processing with LAStools. In this introduction I use a recent project in the Canary islands, Spain, in Spring of 2012 as the example. We created canopy… LiDAR processing with LAStools in the Canary islands weiterlesen