Embodiments described herein provide an apparatus comprising a processor to separate a three-dimensional (3D) scene in a point cloud data set comprising a plurality of voxels into a 3D grid of cells, each cell in the 3D grid of cells comprising a plurality of faces, execute a 3D clustering algorithm to create a plurality of 3D clusters, define a transparency level for each face of each cell in the plurality of cells, detect a surface layer of cells for the plurality of clusters in the 3D scene, and delete, from the plurality of clusters, cells which are not in the surface layer of cells. Other embodiments may be described and claimed.