Using forestutils

Installation

You will need Python installed, version 3.4 or later.

Run pip install forestutils. That’s it! You can now run forestutils from the commandline without any further configuration.

Command-line usage

See the output of forestutils --help for detailed information on command arguments.

To summarise: you supply an input filename, of a pointcloud in .ply_ format. Optional arguments include output directory, whether to save each tree to a seperate file, and so on.

However, not every valid .ply file is a valid input for forestutils - in practise, the format is as flexible as .csv and the parser sacrifices some flexibility for speed.

• If you are using pointclouds generated by Pix4D, no changes are required. For multi-part pointclouds you can pass the name of *_part_1.ply and it will be treated as a single file (ensure the part_N_ply_offset.xyz files are present for this).

• For other pointcloud formats, simply open and resave in MeshLab. This allows forestutils to defer the problem to a more robust program. It also confers second-hand ‘compatibility’ with a wider variety of 3D formats!

• For LIDAR outputs, .las format is very common but unfortunately not supported at this time. (If you have LIDAR you can probably afford to convert data formats though)

Any pointcloud output by forestutils is of course also a valid input, and repeated processing (including size-reduction) should have a limited impact on data completeness (tests show a 1-5% loss in some circumstances).