Support viewer html output

[praveenpenumaka]

There is an option to generate a standalone viewer app from a .ply file in the Supersplat editor. I wanted to bring it to the splat-transform cli.

1. The user can provide camera and target options while generating the HTML ( -a, -e )
2. Creates a temp compressed ply to create a base64Encoded ply, which is replaced in the viewer HTML
3. Added viewer as a submodule for inheriting viewer assets

[slimbuck]

Hi @praveenpenumaka!

This is very cool and actually something we've discussed doing as well.

The reason we held off is because of the nasty submodule thing being pretty nasty.

So my colleague @kpal81xd updated supersplat-viewer to publish to NPM in this PR. It means we can add the viewer as an npm dependency and access the static sources in the usual manner.

Would you like to update your PR with this approach so we can it merged? Alternatively I make the changes.

Thanks again for this and sorry it's taken so long for me to respond.

[praveenpenumaka]

Hi @slimbuck,

Thank you for the response. I was also irked about the submodule.

I am glad to hear that there is a npm module instead. I can make the required changes and update the PR.

Do let me know if the approach I took seems okay. ( Creating a temp file to create viewer app )

Thanks

[slimbuck]

I would probably have written the file to a memory stream somehow.

Writing to a file is probably also ok, but please place it in the os tmp dir using https://nodejs.org/api/os.html#ostmpdir or similar.

[praveenpenumaka]

@slimbuck Made the required changes and verifed it now. Let me know if you need me to incorporate any more changes

[jo-chemla]

Could you make it a togglable option to either import from side companion file (sogs or ply compressed next to the index html), or to do it the way you do and embed the raw data as base64?

[praveenpenumaka]

@jo-chemla You mean like a zip file with an index, CSS, JS, and model file?

[jo-chemla]

Yes, either a zip with the html/js/3dgs/css, or a directory with all these files.

I just realized your addition works as a new html output format
Would it make sense to rather add to all possible output formats, the ability to generate that html page? Either as a GLOBAL or an ACTION, eg passing the --html flag would result in generating the desired output format, with the companion html viewer.

# splat-transform input.ply output.html
splat-transform input.ply output.sog --html

[praveenpenumaka]

@jo-chemla zip generation may take some time for me. will probably pick it up in a separate PR.

One the second aspect, you should be able to generate html viewer even on sog file

splat-transform output.sog output.html

Also, I think it's better if we stick to one input and one output file for now for simplicity.

[praveenpenumaka]

@slimbuck i guess the current version can be merged

[willeastcott]

Approving with some feedback.

[slimbuck]

Sorry it's taken so long to get back to you @praveenpenumaka .

I've pushed a few changes and I'm ready to merge - THANKS SO MUCH FOR THIS!!! <3