Toucan Workflow: Manual Alignment

Manual alignment lets you combine multiple scans into a single unified point cloud by placing matching marks on both scans.

1. Start Manual Alignment

1. Select the alignment tool in the toolbar (it looks like it is disabled, just to the left of the Process icon).
2. Turn on visibility for exactly two of the *_origin point clouds that you want to align.
3. Select manual alignment (sure, give automatic a try — it never works for me).

The screen should look something like this:

Starting Manual Alignment

The “Fixed Layer” is the point cloud data set that the “Moving Layer” will be aligned to.

The “Mark Points” are the points that will be placed to guide alignment.

2. Orient the Point Clouds

Rotate the two top views so that the object orientation is very close to the same in both.

Rotate to Similar Perspective

3. Place Mark Points

Place Marks

Once rotated, click the red mark in the “Mark Points” section and then place a red point on the fixed layer and the moving layer in the same spot in the point clouds. Repeat with the blue and green marks.

For the anvil, I placed one point on the horn, and the other two on opposite corner feet. You want to avoid having all the points on one face of the target object.

4. Align

Click the Align button. JM Studio will shortly come back with the aligned point clouds. Rotate it around and see if it looks OK. If so, click “OK”. If not, go back and place the mark points more accurately or add some more.

Rough Check Alignment

5. Verify Alignment

Once aligned, if all went well, you should see a new group in the data set inspector that contains both point clouds.

You can check the integrity of the alignment by clicking the group’s paint bucket. This will apply a different color to each point cloud in the group. Splotchiness like in this screenshot indicates good alignment. If you see multiple shells of yellow and blue where there should only be one surface, that indicates the alignment didn’t work.

Checking the Alignment Integrity