Create a PCL visualizer in Qt with cmake

In this tutorial we will learn how to create a PCL + Qt project, we will use Cmake rather than Qmake.The program we are going to write is a simple PCL visualizer which allow to change a randomly generated point cloud color.

The tutorial was tested on Linux Ubuntu 12.04 and 14.04. It also seems to be working fine on Windows 8.1 x64.

Feel free to push modifications into the git repo to make this code/tutorial compatible with your platform !

Contents

Create a PCL visualizer in Qt with cmake

The project

For this project Qt is of course mandatory, make sure it is installed and PCL deals with it. qmake is a tool that helps simplify the build process for development project across different platforms, we will use cmake instead because most projects in PCL uses cmake and it is simpler in my opinion.

This is how I organized the project: the build folder contains all built files and the src folder holds all sources files

.
├── build
└── src
    ├── CMakeLists.txt
    ├── main.cpp
    ├── pclviewer.cpp
    ├── pclviewer.h
    ├── pclviewer.ui
    └── pcl_visualizer.pro

If you want to change this layout you will have to do minor modifications in the code, especially line 2 of pclviewer.cpp Create the folder tree and download the sources files from github.

Note

File paths should not contain any special character or the compilation might fail with a moc: Cannot open options file specified with @ error message.

Qt configuration

First we will take a look at how Qt is configured to build this project. Simply open pcl_visualizer.pro with Qt (or double click on the file): and go to the Projects tab

In this example note that I deleted the Debug configuration and only kept the Release config. Use relative paths like this is better than absolute paths; this project should work wherever it has been put.

We specify in the general section that we want to build in the folder ../build (this is a relative path from the .pro file).

The first step of the building is to call cmake (from the build folder) with argument ../src; this is gonna create all files in the build folder without modifying anything in the src folder; thus keeping it clean.

Then we just have to compile our program; the argument -j2 allow to specify how many thread of your CPU you want to use for compilation. The more thread you use the faster the compilation will be (especially on big projects); but if you take all threads from the CPU your OS will likely be unresponsive during the compilation process. See compiler optimizations for more information.

If you don’t want to use Qt Creator but Eclipse instead; see using PCL with Eclipse.

User interface (UI)

The point of using Qt for your projects is that you can easily build cross-platform UIs. The UI is held in the .ui file You can open it with a text editor or with Qt Creator, in this example the UI is very simple and it consists of :

QMainWindow, QWidget: the window (frame) of your application

qvtkWidget: The VTK widget which holds the PCLVisualizer

QLabel: Display text on the user interface

QSlider: A slider to choose a value (here; an integer value)

QLCDNumber: A digital display, 8 segment styled

If you click on Edit Signals/Slots at the top of the Qt window you will see the relationships between some of the UI objects. In our example the sliderMoved(int) signal is connected to the display(int) slot; this means that everytime we move the slider the digital display is updated accordingly to the slider value.

The code

Now, let’s break down the code piece by piece.

main.cpp

#include "pclviewer.h"
#include <QApplication>
#include <QMainWindow>

int main (int argc, char *argv[])
{
  QApplication a (argc, argv);
  PCLViewer w;
  w.show ();

  return a.exec ();
}

Here we include the headers for the class PCLViewer and the headers for QApplication and QMainWindow.
Then the main functions consists of instantiating a QApplication a which manages the GUI application’s control flow and main settings.
A PCLViewer object called w is instantiated and it’s method show() is called.
Finally we return the state of our program exit through the QApplication a.

pclviewer.h

#pragma once

#include <iostream>

// Qt
#include <QMainWindow>

// Point Cloud Library
#include <pcl/point_cloud.h>
#include <pcl/point_types.h>
#include <pcl/visualization/pcl_visualizer.h>

typedef pcl::PointXYZRGBA PointT;
typedef pcl::PointCloud<PointT> PointCloudT;

This file is the header for the class PCLViewer; we include QMainWindow because this class contains UI elements, we include the PCL headers we will be using and the VTK header for the qvtkWidget. We also define typedefs of the point types and point clouds, this improves readabily.

namespace Ui
{
  class PCLViewer;
}

We declare the namespace Ui and the class PCLViewer inside it.

class PCLViewer : public QMainWindow
{
  Q_OBJECT

This is the definition of the PCLViewer class; the macro Q_OBJECT tells the compiler that this object contains UI elements; this imply that this file will be processed through the Meta-Object Compiler (moc).

public:
  explicit PCLViewer (QWidget *parent = 0);
  ~PCLViewer ();

The constructor and destructor of the PCLViewer class.

public Q_SLOTS:
  void
  randomButtonPressed ();

  void
  RGBsliderReleased ();

  void
  pSliderValueChanged (int value);

  void
  redSliderValueChanged (int value);

  void
  greenSliderValueChanged (int value);

  void
  blueSliderValueChanged (int value);

These are the public slots; these functions will be linked with UI elements actions.

protected:
  void
  refreshView();

  pcl::visualization::PCLVisualizer::Ptr viewer;
  PointCloudT::Ptr cloud;

  unsigned int red;
  unsigned int green;
  unsigned int blue;

A boost shared pointer to a PCLVisualier and a pointer to a point cloud are defined here.

The integers red, green, blue will help us store the value of the sliders.

pclviewer.cpp

#include "pclviewer.h"
#include "ui_pclviewer.h"

#if VTK_MAJOR_VERSION > 8
#include <vtkGenericOpenGLRenderWindow.h>
#endif

PCLViewer::PCLViewer (QWidget *parent) :
  QMainWindow (parent),
  ui (new Ui::PCLViewer)
{
  ui->setupUi (this);
  this->setWindowTitle ("PCL viewer");

  // Setup the cloud pointer
  cloud.reset (new PointCloudT);
  // The number of points in the cloud
  cloud->resize (200);

We include the class header and the header for the UI object; note that this file is generated by the moc and it’s path depend on where you call cmake !

After that is the constructor implementation; we setup the ui and the window title name. | Then we initialize the cloud pointer member of the class at a newly allocated point cloud pointer. | The cloud is resized to be able to hold 200 points.

  ui (new Ui::PCLViewer)
{
  ui->setupUi (this);
  this->setWindowTitle ("PCL viewer");

  // Setup the cloud pointer
  cloud.reset (new PointCloudT);
  // The number of points in the cloud
  cloud->resize (200);

  // The default color
  red   = 128;
  green = 128;
  blue  = 128;

  // Fill the cloud with some points
  for (auto& point: *cloud)
  {
    point.x = 1024 * rand () / (RAND_MAX + 1.0f);
    point.y = 1024 * rand () / (RAND_MAX + 1.0f);
    point.z = 1024 * rand () / (RAND_MAX + 1.0f);

    point.r = red;
    point.g = green;
    point.b = blue;
  }

red green and blue protected members are initialized to their default values.

The cloud is filled with random points (in a cube) and accordingly to red green and blue colors.

  // Set up the QVTK window  
#if VTK_MAJOR_VERSION > 8
  auto renderer = vtkSmartPointer<vtkRenderer>::New();
  auto renderWindow = vtkSmartPointer<vtkGenericOpenGLRenderWindow>::New();
  renderWindow->AddRenderer(renderer);
  viewer.reset(new pcl::visualization::PCLVisualizer(renderer, renderWindow, "viewer", false));
  ui->qvtkWidget->setRenderWindow(viewer->getRenderWindow());
  viewer->setupInteractor(ui->qvtkWidget->interactor(), ui->qvtkWidget->renderWindow());
#else
  viewer.reset(new pcl::visualization::PCLVisualizer("viewer", false));
  ui->qvtkWidget->SetRenderWindow(viewer->getRenderWindow());
  viewer->setupInteractor(ui->qvtkWidget->GetInteractor(), ui->qvtkWidget->GetRenderWindow());
#endif

Here we create a PCL Visualizer name viewer and we also specify that we don’t want an interactor to be created.
We don’t want an interactor to be created because our qvtkWidget is already an interactor and it’s the one we want to use.
So the next step is to configure our newly created PCL Visualiser interactor to use the qvtkWidget.

  // Connect "random" button and the function
  connect (ui->pushButton_random,  SIGNAL (clicked ()), this, SLOT (randomButtonPressed ()));

  // Connect R,G,B sliders and their functions
  connect (ui->horizontalSlider_R, SIGNAL (valueChanged (int)), this, SLOT (redSliderValueChanged (int)));
  connect (ui->horizontalSlider_G, SIGNAL (valueChanged (int)), this, SLOT (greenSliderValueChanged (int)));
  connect (ui->horizontalSlider_B, SIGNAL (valueChanged (int)), this, SLOT (blueSliderValueChanged (int)));
  connect (ui->horizontalSlider_R, SIGNAL (sliderReleased ()), this, SLOT (RGBsliderReleased ()));
  connect (ui->horizontalSlider_G, SIGNAL (sliderReleased ()), this, SLOT (RGBsliderReleased ()));
  connect (ui->horizontalSlider_B, SIGNAL (sliderReleased ()), this, SLOT (RGBsliderReleased ()));

  // Connect point size slider
  connect (ui->horizontalSlider_p, SIGNAL (valueChanged (int)), this, SLOT (pSliderValueChanged (int)));

Here we connect slots and signals, this links UI actions to functions. Here is a summary of what we have linked :

pushButton_random:

if button is pressed call randomButtonPressed ()
horizontalSlider_R:

if slider value is changed call redSliderValueChanged(int) with the new value as argument

if slider is released call RGBsliderReleased()
horizontalSlider_G:

if slider value is changed call redSliderValueChanged(int) with the new value as argument

if slider is released call RGBsliderReleased()
horizontalSlider_B:

if slider value is changed call redSliderValueChanged(int) with the new value as argument

if slider is released call RGBsliderReleased()

  viewer->addPointCloud (cloud, "cloud");
  pSliderValueChanged (2);
  viewer->resetCamera ();
  
  refreshView();

This is the last part of our constructor; we add the point cloud to the visualizer, call the method pSliderValueChanged to change the point size to 2.

We finally reset the camera within the PCL Visualizer not avoid the user having to zoom out and refresh the view to be sure the modifications will be displayed.

void
PCLViewer::randomButtonPressed ()
{
  printf ("Random button was pressed\n");

  // Set the new color
  for (auto& point: *cloud)
  {
    point.r = 255 *(1024 * rand () / (RAND_MAX + 1.0f));
    point.g = 255 *(1024 * rand () / (RAND_MAX + 1.0f));
    point.b = 255 *(1024 * rand () / (RAND_MAX + 1.0f));
  }

  viewer->updatePointCloud (cloud, "cloud");
  refreshView();
}

This is the public slot function member called when the push button “Random” is pressed.
The for loop iterates through the point cloud and changes point cloud color to a random number (between 0 and 255).
The point cloud is then updated and so the qtvtkwidget is.

void
PCLViewer::RGBsliderReleased ()
{
  // Set the new color
  for (auto& point: *cloud)
  {
    point.r = red;
    point.g = green;
    point.b = blue;
  }
  viewer->updatePointCloud (cloud, "cloud");
  refreshView();
}

This is the public slot function member called whenever the red, green or blue slider is released
The for loop iterates through the point cloud and changes point cloud color to red, green and blue member values.
The point cloud is then updated and so the qtvtkwidget is.

void
PCLViewer::redSliderValueChanged (int value)
{
  red = value;
  printf ("redSliderValueChanged: [%d|%d|%d]\n", red, green, blue);
}

void
PCLViewer::greenSliderValueChanged (int value)
{
  green = value;
  printf ("greenSliderValueChanged: [%d|%d|%d]\n", red, green, blue);
}

void
PCLViewer::blueSliderValueChanged (int value)
{
  blue = value;
  printf("blueSliderValueChanged: [%d|%d|%d]\n", red, green, blue);
}

These are the public slot function member called whenever the red, green or blue slider value is changed
These functions just changes the member value accordingly to the slider value.
Here the point cloud is not updated; so until you release the slider you won’t see any change in the visualizer.

PCLViewer::~PCLViewer ()
{
  delete ui;
}

The destructor.

Compiling and running

There are two options here :

You have configured the Qt project and you can compile/run just by clicking on the bottom left “Play” button.
You didn’t configure the Qt project; just go to the build folder an run cmake ../src && make -j2 && ./pcl_visualizer

Notice that when changing the slider color, the cloud is not updated until you release the slider (sliderReleased () slot).

If you wanted to update the point cloud when the slider value is changed you could just call the RGBsliderReleased () function inside the *sliderValueChanged (int) functions. The connect between sliderReleased () / RGBsliderReleased () would become useless then.

When using the slider for the point size; the size of the point is updated without having to release the slider.

More on Qt and PCL

If you want to know more about Qt and PCL go take a look at PCL apps like PCD video player or manual registration.

Re-use the CMakeLists.txt from this tutorial if you want to compile the application outside of PCL.