Meshlab

MeshLab is a free and open-source application for processing, editing, repairing, inspecting, converting, and visualizing 3D meshes and point clouds. Developed by the Visual Computing Lab of ISTI-CNR, it is widely used in cultural heritage digitization, research, engineering, healthcare, and 3D printing workflows. The software excels at handling large, unstructured triangular meshes produced by 3D scanners and photogrammetry pipelines, providing robust filters for cleaning, simplification, reconstruction, and measurement.

At its core, MeshLab offers powerful mesh cleaning and repair tools, including removal of duplicated and unreferenced vertices, fixing non-manifold edges, filling holes, and welding borders. For geometry optimization, it supports high-quality simplification (quadric error), subdivision, re-meshing, and surface reconstruction from point clouds via the Ball-Pivoting and Poisson algorithms. These capabilities help transform raw, noisy captures into watertight, printable models and optimized assets for visualization or simulation.

Visualization and inspection capabilities are extensive: users can overlay per-vertex color, normals, curvature, and scalar fields, display wireframes and bounding boxes, and use slice and section views for diagnostics. The interactive paint-on-mesh system allows selection, color painting, smoothing, and attribute editing directly on surfaces, which is especially useful for localized cleanup. A comprehensive measurement toolkit supports distances, angles, areas, and volume estimation, enabling quality control and comparative analysis between different model versions.

For interoperability, MeshLab reads and writes a wide range of formats, including PLY, STL, OBJ, OFF, 3DS, VRML/X3D, and COLLADA, making it a flexible bridge between scanning, modeling, and fabrication tools. It also supports texture mapping, UV inspection, and color processing, facilitating textured model workflows and archival preservation. Export options and decimation controls help tailor assets for real-time applications, web visualization, and 3D printing, while preserving important features.

The software’s registration tools, based on the Iterative Closest Point (ICP) algorithm, enable accurate alignment and merging of multiple scans. Users can compare models through distance color maps and Hausdorff analysis to quantify deviations after edits or between different acquisition sessions. For 3D printing, features such as offsetting, hollowing, thickness checks, and closing operations help prepare models for manufacturing.

MeshLab is cross-platform, running on Windows, macOS, and Linux, with related variants like MeshLabJS for web-based inspection and mobile builds with reduced functionality. As a GPL-licensed project, it benefits from an active research-driven ecosystem and a long history of academic use. While its interface can feel dense to newcomers, experienced users appreciate its transparency, algorithmic depth, and the ability to script repeatable workflows using its extensive filters and parameter presets.

In practice, MeshLab shines when you need a trustworthy, offline, and fully open-source toolchain for cleaning scans, reconstructing surfaces, analyzing geometry, and preparing assets for print or visualization. Its combination of high-quality simplification, robust reconstruction (Poisson, Ball-Pivoting), mesh healing, ICP alignment, and measurement/QA makes it a staple in labs, museums, and maker communities alike.