Point Motion LiDAR Importer

An ongoing Blender add-on by JibuFilm for importing Ouster LiDAR PCAP recordings into Blender as animated point cloud sequences.

This tool is part of an art project exploring LiDAR as a cinematic medium. More at jibujin.com (site under construction)

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Overview

Point Motion LiDAR Importer enables importing raw Ouster LiDAR recordings into Blender for time-based point cloud visualization. It supports:

• Frame based lidar data animation inside of Blender
• Multi-sensor recordings
• Reflectivity/Near-IR/Range attribute import
• Auto Blender Sequence Configurations for Point-Cloud
• Auto detect Ouster sensor meta-data for Blender Configs
• Free camera navigation, lighting and renderin inside Blender
• Frame-by-frame animated point cloud playback

PCAP + JSON
     ↓
Ouster SDK decode
     ↓
Per-frame PLY export
     ↓
Blender animated point cloud sequence

The add-on decodes PCAP/Osf recordings using the Ouster SDK, exports per-frame PLY files, and loads them as an animated sequence inside Blender.

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Project Status

The add-on is currently stable on the author’s own Blender/Ouster workflow.

Help Appreciated

At this stage, the project is especially looking for contributors who can help adapt, test, and maintain support for:

Windows Linux Intel macOS Additional Ouster sensor configurations Non-Ouster LiDAR formats, including Velodyne, Livox, Hesai, and others Alternative point cloud input formats and workflows

If you are working with LiDAR, point clouds, digital cinematography, experimental imaging, robotics, or Blender visualization, contributions are welcome.

Sensor Support

Testing with Ouster LiDAR sensors Outputs: OS0, OS1, OS2, OSDome.

Decoding is Ouster-specific via the Ouster SDK. Other manufacturers (Velodyne, Livox, Hesai) use different packet formats and require separate SDK integration. Contributions welcome.

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Requirements

• Blender 4.2+
• Ouster SDK 0.16.1
• Matching .pcap and .json files — both must share the same filename and be in the same folder

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Installation

1. Download all required wheels ⚠️ please check blender_manifest.toml for the lastes required wheels, different wheels might be required for different devices, please download the Ouster SDK that supports your OWN PLATFORM:

*reference only

pip download ouster-sdk==0.16.1 rosbags blinker certifi \
  charset-normalizer click flask idna ifaddr itsdangerous jinja2 \
  laspy lz4 markupsafe more-itertools numpy packaging pillow \
  prettytable psutil requests ruamel.yaml threadpoolctl \
  typing_extensions urllib3 waitress wcwidth werkzeug zeroconf zstandard \
  --dest ./wheels --only-binary=:all: \
  --python-version=3.11 --platform=macosx_11_0_arm64

2. Place all downloaded .whl files inside point_motion_lidar_importer/wheels/

3. Ensure blender_manifest.toml lists all wheel filenames

4. Zip the entire point_motion_lidar_importer/ folder

5. Blender → Edit → Preferences → Get Extensions → Install from Disk → select ZIP → Enable

6. Open the N Panel → LiDAR tab

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Usage

Import from PCAP:

1. LiDAR panel → Import PCAP + JSON
2. Select your .pcap file — matching .json is auto-detected
3. Frames are decoded and exported to PLY
4. Timeline adjusts automatically to match recording length

Load existing PLY sequence:

• Use Load PLY Sequence → select any file in the folder
• Loads without re-decoding

SDK status: The LiDAR panel displays ✓ or ✗ depending on whether ouster-sdk was detected successfully.

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Contributions

Support for Windows, Linux, Intel macOS, and additional LiDAR manufacturers is not yet implemented. Issues and pull requests are welcome.

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Credits

Sequence loading approach inspired by blender-sequence-loader (MIT License) © InteractiveComputerGraphics

LiDAR decoding powered by Ouster SDK

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License

GNU General Public License v3.0 or later (GPL-3.0-or-later)

You may use, modify, and redistribute this software under the terms of the GPL. Any modified versions must remain GPL-licensed and be distributed with source code.

For the full license text see gnu.org/licenses/gpl-3.0

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Part of an ongoing art research project by JibuFilm — jibujin.com