Best way to store data in leaf and internal nodes

[YoshuaNava]

Hi,
I'm testing OpenVDB as a representation for 3D maps, and I can already compute surface normals at the level of points/voxels, but I want to save normal vectors and other pieces of information at the leaf and internal nodes of the three.

For example, knowing the normal (and related quantities) for a whole group of voxels can help you to:

1. Roughly know the density of that group of voxels,
2. Visualize the variance of the points within the leaves (e.g. as ellipsoids),
3. Know in which direction the majority of normals from those points are looking at.

What would be the best way to tackle this? E.g. should I modify the library and add value containers to the leaf/internal nodes, or can this be handled by an existing approach like the AttributeHandler of VDB Points?

(I assume the answer to this question would strongly depend on the answer to my other, closely-related question)

Thank you in advance.

Best,
Yoshua Nava

[YoshuaNava]

Dear @Idclip @dneg,
Sorry for bothering by tagging you directly. My motivation for directly contacting you is that I'm evaluating a VDB-based solution for a project, and while I'm prototyping and benchmarking each data representation alternative for the operations I need to perform, your knowledge of this topic may reach aspects that are out of my sight at this stage. Furthermore, it is also good to know what are current limitations, and whether/how the library may evolve to handle this scenario.

Could you provide your view on this topic?

(I'm also reading through the PRs in https://github.com/dneg/openvdb_points_dev/pulls?q=is%3Apr+is%3Aclosed, which I found when looking for the development branch of OpenVDB::Points. I want to understand the design decisions and structure in depth)

Sorry again, and thank you in advance 🙏

Yoshua Nava