Stefano Jannuzzo has created and shared a small point cloud system for Mental Ray Maya and Softimage, called sj_pointCloud. sj_pc are a small set of shaders allowing to write and read point clouds for both Softimage and Maya (version 2011 and above). Check out the sj_pc page for downloads, documentation and more information.
sj_pointCloud consists of 3 shaders:
sj_pc_write to write the cloud to pdc or mental ray map format, or to convert from pdc to map.
sj_pc_tag to mark the objects for writing.
sj_pc_read to read the map files and interpolate the information stored in the map.
sj_pointCloud doesn’t really have all the subtleties of a real point cloud system that you could find in renderman or other systems, however it’s pretty flexible and really easy to use where you are able to control the density of the cloud, and also edit it in Softimage or Maya. Pretty cool! Check out the page for sj_pc for downloads, documentation and more information
