Visualization tools for point clouds and 3D imagery

A device comprising:

• one or more processors configured to:
• receive a point cloud comprising a plurality of data points that are distributed across a plurality of different planes and that collectively produce a three-dimensional (“3D”) image, each data point of the plurality of data points comprising a set of elements with values that define a position of the data point in 3D space and attributes that specify visual characteristics of the data point;
• select a set of the plurality of data points that are located within a particular slice of the point cloud, wherein the set of data points comprises fewer data points than the plurality of data points;
• determine a position of a camera relative to the set of data points;
• order the set of data points to a set of planes based on a distance between the position of each data point from the set of data points and the position of the camera;
• generate a first visualization by rendering the visual characteristics of each particular data point of the set of data points at the position defined for that particular data point in the 3D space by the values of that particular data point;
• generate a second visualization that positions each particular data point of the set of data points based on one or more of the attributes that specify the visual characteristics of the particular data point rather than positioning the particular data point based on the position defined by the values of that particular data point, wherein generating the second visualization comprises generating a different layer for the second visualization based on the visual characteristics of each subset of the set of data points that are ordered to a different plane of the set of planes as a result of said ordering;
• and
• present the first visualization and the second visualization together on a display, wherein the second visualization presents the one or more attributes for the set of data points in a different format than the rendering of the set of data points in the first visualization.

A non-transitory computer-readable medium, storing a plurality of processor-executable instructions to:

• receive a point cloud comprising a plurality of data points that are distributed across a plurality of different planes and that collectively produce a three-dimensional (“3D”) image, each data point of the plurality of data points comprising a set of elements with values that define a position of the data point in 3D space and attributes that specify visual characteristics of the data point;
• select a set of the plurality of data points that are located within a particular slice of the point cloud, wherein the set of data points comprises fewer data points than the plurality of data points;
• determine a position of a camera relative to the set of data points;
• order the set of data points to a set of planes based on a distance between the position of each data point from the set of data points and the position of the camera;
• generate a first visualization by rendering the visual characteristics of each particular data point of the set of data points at the position defined for that particular data point in the 3D space by the values of that particular data point;
• generate a second visualization that positions each particular data point of the set of data points based on one or more of the attributes that specify the visual characteristics of the particular data point rather than positioning the particular data point based on the position defined by the values of that particular data point, wherein generating the second visualization comprises generating a different layer for the second visualization based on the visual characteristics of each subset of the set of data points that are ordered to a different plane of the set of planes as a result of said ordering;
• and
• present the first visualization and the second visualization together on a display, wherein the second visualization presents the one or more attributes for the set of data points in a different format than the rendering of the set of data points in the first visualization.