Mesh Compare

A focused macOS workspace for visual and quantitative mesh comparison.

Highlights

• Open 1–8 meshes or a multi-layer MeshLab project.
• Compare meshes in a linked camera grid or a single overlay view.
• Normalize every Grid mesh independently for easier shape comparison.
• Run Distance to Reference and Double Layer analyses with color overlays.
• Choose the Reference mesh, assign uniform colors, and control layer visibility.
• Force double-sided rendering for open or inconsistently wound surfaces.
• Save reusable camera poses with tags and screenshots.
• Render comparison grids from the command line.

Views

Linked Grid	Overlay
Inspect each mesh in its own synchronized viewport.	Inspect all visible layers in one viewport.

Quick Start

Open files from Finder, drag them into the window, or use Open in the toolbar. Supported mesh formats are .obj, .ply, .stl, .off, and embedded .glb.

# Open one or more meshes
open build/dist/meshcompare.app --args reference_gt.obj candidate.obj

# Open one MeshLab project
open build/dist/meshcompare.app --args comparison.mlp

The first mesh whose name contains gt becomes the initial Reference. If no mesh matches, Mesh Compare uses the first imported mesh.

Build

Requirements: CMake 3.18+, Qt 5.15, a C++ toolchain, and the platform OpenGL SDK. MeshLab/VCGLib sources are vendored in third_party/.

cmake -S . -B build \
  -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release \
  -DCMAKE_PREFIX_PATH=/path/to/Qt/5.15
cmake --build build --target meshcompare --parallel

The macOS bundle is written to:

build/dist/meshcompare.app

Run the test suite with:

cmake -S . -B build -DBUILD_TESTING=ON
cmake --build build --parallel
ctest --test-dir build --output-on-failure

Batch Rendering

Render an .mlp project to a PNG without opening the application window:

build/dist/meshcompare.app/Contents/MacOS/meshcompare \
  --render-grid comparison.mlp \
  --output-dir ./renders \
  --size 2048x1152 \
  --coloring distance

Use meshcompare --help for camera, saved-pose, coloring, and output options.

Architecture

Mesh Compare owns its workspace, UI, analysis, camera library, and diagnostics. The vendored MeshLab viewport engine is isolated behind a renderer adapter; the legacy MeshLab window, docks, filters, and editing tools are not packaged.

See docs/architecture.md for implementation details.

License

See LICENSE.txt.