Reference/Release Notes/3.1/Cycles - Blender Developer Wiki mentions
Point clouds can be generated with geometry nodes or imported from other software. Some example uses are sand, water splashes, particles or motion graphics.
Is there in 3.1 any direct import to a point cloud primitive? For example, even importing from Alembic (grain.abc, Blender new alembic point cloud render - YouTube) leads to a regular mesh, which would then need to be converted in GN with a Mesh to Points node to a render as a true point cloud in Cycles.
Secondly, I see I can create a native point cloud object from Python, and set arrays on it using the usual foreach_set() approach, but so far I’ve had no luck in actually ending up with a correct point cloud in either viewport or cycles render. Should this currently work?