- Maya C++ plugin for fast surface and volume point-cloud generation.
- Performance benchmarks show ~20× speed improvement (and often considerably more) compared to Maya's built-in Particle File emitter (based on tests in Maya 2018).
- Supports color sampling, deforming meshes, multithreading, and PCD/PLY import / export.
The tool generates point clouds either on the surface of a mesh or inside its volume, and it fully supports animated / deforming geometry.
It also performs shader-based color sampling, assigning each point the color coming from the mesh's texture or shading network.
The plugin supports exporting the generated points (from the particle system) as point-cloud files in multiple formats (PCD, PLY, ASCII, Binary, Binary Compressed), allowing them to be used directly in external tools (also import).
It can also display the points inside Maya either as a particle system or as a voxel-style mesh.
Performance was a key goal.
The plugin generates points over 20× faster (and often far more) than Maya's built-in Particle File emitter.
This tool was inspired by a custom internal utility I developed for my team during my tenure as a CG Engineer at Replay Technologies. While the original tool addressed specific production needs, this personal project was rebuilt from the ground up as a legacy plugin to demonstrate advanced geometry processing, C++ optimization, and Maya API integration.
Deforming Mesh Scatter |
Scatter + Color Sampling |
Volume Scatter |
Deforming Mesh Scatter |
Voxel-Style Mesh Preview |
Color Sampling |
Distribution Modes |
Advanced Showcase |
- Surface scattering.
- Volume scattering.
- Shader-based color sampling.
- Support for deforming / animated meshes.
- Export to PCD and PLY (ASCII / Binary / Compressed).
- Import of point clouds via Open3D.
- Display inside Maya as either a particle system or as a voxel-style mesh.
- Multithreaded point generation.
The tool avoids evaluating every point individually.
Instead, it projects a regular grid from one side of the mesh's bounding box into the geometry.
For each projection line, it detects only the first and last intersection points with the mesh.
All points between these two intersections are generated as a continuous line of points.
This approach eliminates most per-point inside/outside checks and enables the 20×+ performance improvement.
(The performance gap increases as the requested point count grows, making the advantage even more significant for heavy datasets).
The tool avoids evaluating every point individually. Instead, it projects a regular grid from one side of the mesh's bounding box into the geometry. For each projection line, it detects only the first and last intersection points with the mesh. All points between these two intersections are generated as a continuous line of points.
This approach eliminates most per-point occupancy checks and enables the 20x+ performance improvement (the performance gap increases as the point count grows, making the advantage even more significant for heavy datasets).
Internal volume sampling (Sphere) |
Boundary & Intersection detection (Torus) |
- A single custom
MPxEmitterNodehandles all point generation. - A supporting
MPxCommandbuilds the scattering setup (emitter, particle system, connections). - Visualization is done either via particles or via a voxel-style mesh created by the plugin.
- Maya C++ API (MPxEmitterNode, MPxCommand, MThreadPool).
- Open3D (point-cloud loading and saving: PLY/PCD).
- Boost C++ Libraries.
- Standard C++14 multithreading and containers .
- C++17
- Windows 10
- Maya 2018 SDK
- Visual Studio 2015 (MSVC 140 toolset)
- Open3D 1.1.1 (headers + libs placed under
/3rdparty/open3d/) - Boost C++14 Standard
Required modules:boost::filesystem(directory & file detection)boost::algorithm(replace_all, join)
cmds.loadPlugin(r"C:\ReplayCode\MayaModules\plugins\scatteringNode.mll")cmds.scatteringNodeCmd()cmds.scatteringNodeCmd()cmds.scatteringNodeCmd('pSphere1', 'pCone1', 'pCube1')cmds.scatteringNodeCmd(filePath="D:/mayaTests/scatteringNode/PCD/test9.ply")cmds.scatteringNodeCmd('pSphere1', 'pCone1', 'pCube1',
filePath="D:/mayaTests/scatteringNode/PCD/test9.ply")cmds.scatteringNodeCmd(randomPos=0.75)--name : Name of the created scattering setup
--filePath : Path for exporting the generated point cloud
--randomPos : Enables randomized scattering mode
['scatteringEmitter1', 'scatteringParticleShape1', 'scatteringMeshShape1']- Undo/redo for the command is not implemented.
- Import pipeline still relies on a single-thread stage in heavy files.
- Error handling around Open3D exceptions is minimal.
- The scatteringNode currently handles several unrelated concerns
- (scattering, color sampling, file I/O, threading, and geometry utilities)
- within a single implementation. This leads to a large source file that works well
- for a legacy tool, but would likely be split into smaller modules in a modern codebase for clarity and maintainability.
- Refactor export system into a standalone module.
- Support for more point-cloud formats (LAS, E57).
- Better error handling and logging.
- Implement undo/redo support for the command.
Legacy plugin.
Designed for Maya 2018, Visual Studio 2015, and Open3D v1.1.1, Boost.
Kept publicly to demonstrate experience with C++, Maya API, geometry processing, multithreading, and point-cloud tooling.
Not actively maintained.
Perry Guy - Technical Artist & CG Engineer
Extensive experience in 3D Graphics, Tool Development, and Performance Optimization.
📧 Email: perryguy2@gmail.com
YouTube Channel: @ThePerryGuy
This project is licensed under the MIT License. See the LICENSE file for details.