Remapping point data to channels dialog error

Hi, this is a relatively minor issue, not even sure if it is a bug, found on v0.1.15.148-dd7ce35.

When I was importing a text file with normals, the dialog incorrectly identified data channels as rgb, instead of normal, but if the color range is 0 - 1, then shouldn’t the negative values generate some kind of warning or error that data channel values are out of range?

I ask because I said ok to see what would happen, and the conversion went on, however the coloring was a bit off in the point cloud, I think because the lower limit is 0.

Thank you,

-Lexi

Thank you for mentioning this!

It does seem like we should change how we handle such cases. Perhaps we should identify such data channels with negative values as the normal channel. Also, perhaps we should output a warning if we find channel values outside of the specified range.

In general, we made the naive assumption that a text file with 6 columns is XYZRGB.

As long as you are able to change the RGB to Normal[x], Normal[y] and Normal[z] by clicking on the column titles and picking from the menus, you should be able to use the dialog without any problems.
Sequoia has no way of knowing what the data really is, unless the file starts with a column mapping line. but as Paul suggested, we could look at the value range and if it appears to be between -1 and +1, assume it is a Normal.

Once you change the RGB to Normal, you should be able to save the mapping as a Preset for the Batch > Convert Point Files dialog, so once you have defined it, you can simply pick it for any other text file. In the next beta build, the option to convert a single file through File>Convert Point File will be removed, and the Batch dialog will be the only workflow available…

This seems like a good idea. Regardless of how clever you make the format guessing; as long as users can change the settings we can, and will, get it wrong so it would be good to have a warning so mistakes are caught early.