Hi
How do inport high poly model into blender?
None of the programs listed Link are not able to open or convert 28M triangle .ply file to another format.
Blender can inport 10M tri model using 4-5 Gb of memory, after saving blend and reopening, memory use is only 1,2-1,3 Gb.
Why blender ply inporter can’t save portions of data on HDD and join parts later.
Why it’s good to us 2-5 % of cpu’s 1 core and write few bytes data /sec on HDD?
When memory gets full then .PLY inporter starts inporting ~ 2645 verteks per/ min
That means 35% (that’s left after fast inport when memory runs out) of geometry takes 30,9 hours to inport.
CPU use is 0-10 % and HDD use is 4% (10 MB/s)
My HDD’s are ~250 MB/s max write speed
What is going on?
So i tested some commercial applications, none of them are able to load 28 000 000 tri Lucy with 8GB of ram.
There is a 20 000 000 tri version in “QSplat Multiresolution Point Rendering System” format
But how to convert sutch format to mesh.
BTW from QSplat Lucy looks very hi detail and it’s not eroded like the “Thai Statue”
Maybe somebody with more memory can convert the .ply file to .blend, normals calculated out, solid mesh, scale to 0,2m in height.
If removing doubles doesnt make it un manifold then why not to reduce geometry down by 35-50%
Anybody knows how to split up .ply file?
Or how to convert .gs file to mesh?
Is your interest solely to test the ply import capabilities of Blender, or do you just want the model? If the latter then search for the same model with lower poly count, like the one here.
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I was just after the Lucy model.
Thanks for the link 
EDIT
Can i force Blender to use ~6,5 GB of memory and keep some free for Vista
so i can turn it sleep for night and inport 2-3 days
Maybe even it speeds up inporting if cpu doesnt drop close to 0 % when memory runs out.
Can the .ply inporter write right to blend file on HDD
because i don’t need to edit the model and in object mode it takes just 3,5 GB and a little more to render in LuxRender.
))) i loved the details of 20M tri QSplat, it looked beautyfull. )))
EDIT2
Ply file decimation software costs 1000 $
nice 
turns out ply aint so open format like spoked
VRMesh v5.0 Studio Demo was able to decimate 14M point cloud and export to obj format.
But it’s a mess, needs some fixing.
You may want to visit the full moon map thread. He was faced with a lot of data and managed to work it out using a script.
http://blenderartists.org/forum/showthread.php?t=186047
Interesting, can sutch script be used inside blender to speed up 3d viewport rendering when geometry is very hi. Like with voxels.
Now i have 5M verteks Lucy, even if i hide 90% of them in edit mode it seems the hidden data is still slowing down 3d viewport. It’s not allways like that with lower geometry (then viewport gets mutch faster when i hide data).
If i zoom in and on my screen there are only 1% of geometry, the fps is still down.
Anyway i discovered mesh automatic fixing tools (holes, double edges/verts, Spike - Overlapped - Sharp - Intersected - Folded Triangles).
It was reall pain in the ass to fix manually large mesh when viewport is soo slow. :yes:
I uploaded the Lucy 10M triangle model.
It’s clean closed mesh, normals facing out, object center on bottom center x0y0z0.
It’s 7zip file, rename zip to 7z before u extract.