Visualization of Digitally-scanned Point Cloud / OBJ Mesh in Revit?

[rhughes]

I'm working on a ground-up residential project in a remote location in northern Colorado.  The site has some cool rocky outcroppings at the edge of a steep drop down to a river.  We hired a consultant to digitally scan the rocks, and they provided panoramic photo imagery, a detailed colored point cloud, and and OBJ mesh with textures mapped.  These deliverables all look great, and have been useful to relocated the building with respect to the rocks.

The issue I've been struggling with the last two days is trying to make client-presentation level 3D visualizations of this information using Revit (and/ or other software).  Here's what I have tried:

• Revit:  Point clouds don't render at all.  I can screen-capture at a low resolution to get a somewhat photographic visual of the point cloud, but it is pretty low-quality.
  
  
• 3DS Max:  I tried linking my Revit model (and separately the point cloud .RCP file from Recap) into 3DS Max.  While technically the Arnold rendering engine in Max can render the point cloud, even when adjusting the point size, it is very "ethereal" and not solid-looking.  I've imported the texture-mapped OBJ into Max, and potentially could separately link my Revit model into Max to render the Revit model with the laser-scanned rock outcroppings, it isn't an ideal workflow...
  
  
• Rhino:  Rhino seems to handle the OBJ mesh better than Max, in terms of rendering it, though admittedly I'm not well-versed in either program.  

All this to say--does anyone have a good workflow for using digitally-scanned point-clouds (or more likely meshes) to render client-level images in Revit, without having to use other software?

Maybe there is a plug-in that can help with rendering the point cloud in Revit, or somehow importing the texture-mapped mesh into Revit with the textures intact?  I feel like digital scans are common enough these days that someone must have developed a workflow for visualizing in Revit..?!?

Thanks in advance,

Ryan

[joe_keogh]

Hi @rhughes 

You can give Twinmotion a try. it is currently available for free from Epic games.  

[Anonymous]

You can try exporting the mesh object from Rhino to AutoCAD and then import that into a project or family.  Another option is Lumion, where you can apply materials to the mesh object once it has been imported.