Brekel PointCloud / v2
Brekel PointCloud v2
Pointcloud recording with a Kinect v2, Orbbec Astra or RealSense sensor
Brekel PointCloud v2 is a Windows application that records animated 3D pointclouds with a single depth sensor and exports them to mesh, particle and texture formats for use in most 3D packages and game engines.
Supported sensors are the Kinect v2 (Xbox One or Kinect for Windows), the Orbbec Astra and Astra Pro, and the Intel RealSense D415, D435 and D455. One sensor at a time: aligning and fusing several is a PointCloud v3 feature.
The Kinect v2 dates from 2013 and Microsoft ended production in 2017, so it is second-hand only now, but it still works and so does this app on Windows 10/11. This is the cheaper option for single-sensor setups. Starting fresh? Look at Brekel PointCloud v3 instead: it is in active development, supports modern sensors alongside the older ones, and can align and fuse multiple sensors.
With a Kinect v2 the sensor is fussier about the PC than the app is: it needs a USB 3.0 port on an Intel or Renesas chipset, since other brands may or may not work. Beyond that a DirectX 11 capable GPU is enough (even old ones like an Intel HD4000 or GeForce 610M), along with a dual core i5 or i7 around 3.1 GHz; slower CPUs run but may drop frames. Recordings are large, so fast disk with room on it matters more than any of that.
If a Kinect v2 keeps dropping out and reconnecting a few seconds into a recording on Windows 11, that is a Windows audio setting rather than the sensor, the cable or the port: see Kinect v2 keeps disconnecting on Windows 11.
Installs like any other app. No subscription, no cloud processing, no login. All data stays on your machine.
Windows 8 / 8.1 / 10 / 11 (64-bit). Windows 7 and older are not supported, their USB stack cannot handle the sensor bandwidth · from $99 (excl tax)
Recording
Pointclouds and/or meshes record at the full 30 fps of the sensor to the BPC file format, along with color or infrared video ready to be UV-mapped as a texture, and audio in sync from the Kinect microphone or any other audio source. Data can be compressed during recording to trade file size against quality, and cropped to reduce size.
- Automatic floor alignment (optional)
- Body detection to clip people from the background, for greenscreen-like effects
- Background subtraction: learn the empty background, then isolate the foreground
- Crop and transform pointclouds during recording and/or export
- Recording can be synced between multiple Brekel apps on the same machine or across the network (including pointclouds recorded in sync with Brekel Body v2)
Export
Conversion to the output formats happens as a post process, with edge filtering, gap filling, smoothing and a batch processor for handling multiple files at once. Recordings come out as animated meshes (Alembic and OBJ being the ones most 3D packages read), as point and particle caches for the major VFX tools, or as image sequences and video. The full list:
- Meshes: Alembic, RealFlow BIN, OBJ, PLY
- Points/particles: RealFlow BIN, BGEO, PDB, PDC, PRT (Krakatoa), PTC (Renderman), PTS/PTX (Leica), XYZ / XYZRGB, and the UnityCoder Point Cloud Viewer binary format
- Textures: JPG, PNG, TGA, TIFF, OpenEXR depth, and video (MP4 and other containers)
For playback in Unity the app comes with a bRGBD integration (script/shaders) that works on Windows, Android, iOS, macOS, XR headsets, HoloLens and Magic Leap. There is also the free Geometry Sequence Player for Unity by BuildingVolumes.
Want to see the output before buying? Grab the sample data.
Licensing
The free trial is the full application with one limit: recordings stop at 10 seconds. Export, the filtering and gap-filling options and every output format work, so you can run a real clip through your own pipeline before buying.
A license is perpetual: it never expires and updates within the v2 branch are free. There is no maintenance plan for PointCloud v2. How trials, evaluations and licenses work in general: see licensing.
Videos
More videos
Supported sensors
- Kinect for Xbox One / Kinect for Windows v2 (the Xbox One version needs the separately sold USB 3.0 adapter)
- Orbbec Astra
- Orbbec Astra Pro
- Intel RealSense D415
- Intel RealSense D435 / D435i
- Intel RealSense D455 / D456
Full specs for these, and 91 sensors in all: depth sensor comparison.
Exports
- Meshes: Alembic, RealFlow BIN, OBJ, PLY
- Points and particles: RealFlow BIN, BGEO, PDB, PDC, PRT, PTC, PTS, PTX, XYZ, UnityCoder
- Textures: JPG, PNG, TGA, TIFF, OpenEXR depth, video
Requirements
- Windows 8 / 8.1 / 10 / 11 (64-bit). Windows 7 and older are not supported, their USB stack cannot handle the sensor bandwidth
- USB 3.0 port, Intel or Renesas chipset (other brands may or may not work)
- DirectX 11 capable GPU (even older ones like Intel HD4000 or GeForce 610M work)
- Dual core i5/i7 CPU around 3.1 GHz (slower works but may drop frames)
- 4 GB RAM or more
- 1280x1024 screen (1920x1080 or higher recommended)
Compare versions
| PointCloud v3 latest | PointCloud v2 | PointCloud v1 | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Supported sensors | Azure Kinect, Kinect v1/v2, Orbbec, RealSense, ZED | Kinect v2, Orbbec Astra, Intel RealSense | Kinect v1 (Xbox 360 / Kinect for Windows) |
| Multiple sensors (alignment + fusion) | yes | no | no |
| Mesh export formats | Alembic, RealFlow BIN, OBJ, PLY, SenseXR | Alembic, RealFlow BIN, OBJ, PLY | Alembic, RealFlow BIN, OBJ, PLY |
| Point/particle export formats | Alembic, RealFlow BIN, BGEO, E57, GEO, LAS, OBJ, PCD, PDA, PDB, PDC, PLY, PRT, PTC, PTS, PTX, RIB, XYZ, UnityCoder | RealFlow BIN, BGEO, PDB, PDC, PRT, PTC, PTS, PTX, XYZ, UnityCoder | RealFlow BIN, BGEO, PDB, PDC, PRT, PTC, PCD |
| Texture export formats | JPG, PNG, TGA, TIFF, OpenEXR, video (H264/H265 and more) | JPG, PNG, TGA, TIFF, OpenEXR depth, video | JPG, PNG, TGA, TIFF, OpenEXR depth, AVI |
| Audio recording | yes | yes | yes |
| Still updated | yes | no | no |
| Price (excl tax) | $149 Single Sensor $299 Multi Sensor | $99 | $49 |
scroll sideways for every version, the labels stay put
Trial / Buy
Free trial
Trial restrictions Limited to 10 seconds of recording.
The documentation PDF ships inside the installer, and is also a separate download (zip).
Buy a license
- License $99 Shop
prices excl tax · perpetual license · free v2 updates
How licensing works (trials, evaluation licenses, delivery).