MeshLab is a 3D mesh processing software system that is oriented to the management and processing of unstructured large meshes and provides a set of tools for editing, cleaning, healing, inspecting, rendering, and converting these kinds of

meshes A mesh is a barrier made of connected strands of metal, fiber, or other flexible or ductile materials. A mesh is similar to a web or a net in that it has many attached or woven strands. Types * A plastic mesh may be extruded, oriented, ex ...

. MeshLab is

free and open-source software Free and open-source software (FOSS) is a term used to refer to groups of software consisting of both free software and open-source software where anyone is freely licensed to use, copy, study, and change the software in any way, and the source ...

, subject to the requirements of the

GNU General Public License The GNU General Public License (GNU GPL or simply GPL) is a series of widely used free software licenses that guarantee end users the Four Freedoms (Free software), four freedoms to run, study, share, and modify the software. The license was th ...

(GPL), version 2 or later, and is used as both a complete package and a

library A library is a collection of materials, books or media that are accessible for use and not just for display purposes. A library provides physical (hard copies) or digital access (soft copies) materials, and may be a physical location or a vir ...

powering other software. It is well known in the more technical fields of 3D development and data handling.

Overview

MeshLab is developed by the

ISTI The "Alessandro Faedo" Istituto di Scienza e Tecnologie dell'Informazione (''Institute of Information Science and Technologies'') is an institute of the Italian National Research Council (CNR). The institute is located in the CNR research area in ...

- CNR research center; initially MeshLab was created as a course assignment at the

University of Pisa The University of Pisa ( it, Università di Pisa, UniPi), officially founded in 1343, is one of the oldest universities in Europe. History The Origins The University of Pisa was officially founded in 1343, although various scholars place ...

in late 2005. It is a general-purpose system aimed at the processing of the typical not-so-small unstructured 3D models that arise in the 3D scanning pipeline. The automatic mesh cleaning filters includes removal of duplicated, unreferenced vertices, non-manifold edges, vertices, and null faces. Remeshing tools support high quality simplification based on quadric error measure, various kinds of

subdivision surface In the field of 3D computer graphics, a subdivision surface (commonly shortened to SubD surface) is a curved surface represented by the specification of a coarser polygon mesh and produced by a recursive algorithmic method. The curved surface, t ...

s, and two surface reconstruction algorithms from

point cloud Point or points may refer to: Places * Point, Lewis, a peninsula in the Outer Hebrides, Scotland * Point, Texas, a city in Rains County, Texas, United States * Point, the NE tip and a ferry terminal of Lismore, Inner Hebrides, Scotland * Poin ...

s based on the '' ball-pivoting'' technique and on the Poisson surface reconstruction approach. For the removal of noise, usually present in acquired surfaces, MeshLab supports various kinds of

smoothing In statistics and image processing, to smooth a data set is to create an approximating function that attempts to capture important patterns in the data, while leaving out noise or other fine-scale structures/rapid phenomena. In smoothing, the dat ...

filters and tools for

curvature In mathematics, curvature is any of several strongly related concepts in geometry. Intuitively, the curvature is the amount by which a curve deviates from being a straight line, or a surface deviates from being a plane. For curves, the canonic ...

analysis and visualization. It includes a tool for the registration of multiple range maps based on the

iterative closest point Iterative closest point (ICP) is an algorithm employed to minimize the difference between two clouds of points. ICP is often used to reconstruct 2D or 3D surfaces from different scans, to localize robots and achieve optimal path planning (espec ...

algorithm. MeshLab also includes an interactive direct paint-on-mesh system that allows users to interactively change the color of a mesh, to define selections and to directly smooth out noise and small features. MeshLab is available for most platforms, including

Linux Linux ( or ) is a family of open-source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged as a Linux distribution, which ...

Mac OS X macOS (; previously OS X and originally Mac OS X) is a Unix operating system developed and marketed by Apple Inc. since 2001. It is the primary operating system for Apple's Mac (computer), Mac computers. Within the market of ...

Windows Windows is a group of several proprietary graphical operating system families developed and marketed by Microsoft. Each family caters to a certain sector of the computing industry. For example, Windows NT for consumers, Windows Server for serv ...

and, with reduced functionality, on Android and

iOS iOS (formerly iPhone OS) is a mobile operating system created and developed by Apple Inc. exclusively for its hardware. It is the operating system that powers many of the company's mobile devices, including the iPhone; the term also includes ...

and even as a pure

client-side Client-side refers to operations that are performed by the client in a client–server relationship in a computer network. General concepts Typically, a client is a computer application, such as a web browser, that runs on a user's local comput ...

JavaScript JavaScript (), often abbreviated as JS, is a programming language that is one of the core technologies of the World Wide Web, alongside HTML and CSS. As of 2022, 98% of Website, websites use JavaScript on the Client (computing), client side ...

application called MeshLabJS. The system supports input/output in the following formats:

PLY Ply, Pli, Plies or Plying may refer to: Common uses * Ply (layer), typically of paper or wood ** Plywood, made of layers of wood ** Tire ply, a layer of cords embedded in the rubber of a tire Places * Plymouth railway station, England, station ...

, STL, OFF, OBJ,

3DS The is a handheld game console produced by Nintendo. It was announced in March 2010 and unveiled at E3 2010 as the successor to the Nintendo DS. The system features backward compatibility with Nintendo DS video games. As an eighth-generatio ...

, VRML 2.0,

X3D X3D is a royalty-free ISO/IEC standard for declaratively representing 3D computer graphics. File format support includes XML, ClassicVRML, Compressed Binary Encoding (CBE) and a draft JSON encoding. X3D became the successor to the Virtual Re ...

and

COLLADA COLLADA (for ''COLLA''borative ''D''esign ''A''ctivity) is an interchange file format for interactive 3D applications. It is managed by the nonprofit technology consortium, the Khronos Group, and has been adopted by ISO as a publicly available ...

. MeshLab can also import point clouds reconstructed using

Photosynth Photosynth is a discontinued app and service from Microsoft Live Labs and the University of Washington that analyzes digital photographs and generates a three-dimensional model of the photos and a point cloud of a photographed object. Pattern r ...

. MeshLab is used in various academic and research contexts, like microbiology,

cultural heritage Cultural heritage is the heritage of tangible and intangible heritage assets of a group or society that is inherited from past generations. Not all heritages of past generations are "heritage"; rather, heritage is a product of selection by soci ...

, surface reconstruction, paleontology, for

rapid prototyping Rapid prototyping is a group of techniques used to quickly fabricate a scale model of a physical part or assembly using three-dimensional computer aided design (CAD) data. Construction of the part or assembly is usually done using 3D printin ...

orthopedic surgery Orthopedic surgery or orthopedics ( alternatively spelt orthopaedics), is the branch of surgery concerned with conditions involving the musculoskeletal system. Orthopedic surgeons use both surgical and nonsurgical means to treat musculoskeletal ...

, in

orthodontics Orthodontics is a dentistry specialty that addresses the diagnosis, prevention, management, and correction of mal-positioned teeth and jaws, and misaligned bite patterns. It may also address the modification of facial growth, known as dentofacial ...

, and

desktop manufacturing 3D printing or additive manufacturing is the construction of a three-dimensional object from a CAD model or a digital 3D model. It can be done in a variety of processes in which material is deposited, joined or solidified under computer co ...

Additional images

File:MeshLab snapshot elephant.jpg, Animal. File:Village Bourbonnais.png, Geographical data. File:MeshLab 2020.12 20221011 13 07 25- Meshes.png, Version 2020.12

References

External links

Github repository for MeshlabMeshLabJS
homepage of the experimental, client based, JavaScript, version of MeshLab that runs inside a browser.
MeshLab Stuff Blog
Development blog, with tutorials and example of use of MeshLab.
MeshLab for iOS
page dedicated to the

iPad The iPad is a brand of iOS and iPadOS-based tablet computers that are developed by Apple Inc. The iPad was conceived before the related iPhone but the iPhone was developed and released first. Speculation about the development, operating s ...

and iPhone version of MeshLab.
MeshLab for Android
page dedicated to the Android version of MeshLab {{DEFAULTSORT:Meshlab 2005 software 3D graphics software 3D graphics software that uses Qt 3D modeling software for Linux Computer-aided design software Computer-aided design software for Linux Free 3D graphics software Free computer-aided design software Free graphics software Free software programmed in C++ Video game development software

Overview

Additional images

See also

References

External links