Every time I hear about Gaussian splatting, I think about triangle splatting[0] - GPUs were built to render triangles, so I wonder what games would be like if we supported generating and rendering them as much as we do Gaussian splats.
The Dreams game engine (only for PS4) does this and is able to achieve scenes that no other game engine can. Here's a technical talk about how they did it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u9KNtnCZDMI
Actually sorry not sure if they use triangle splatting, but gaussian splats at least.
If I recall their talk correctly, models are unions of SDFs, which get sampled into a point cloud, and each point gets splatted as another SDF primitive called a "fleck".
I think that Gaussian splatting is generally better, as the Gaussians are smoother and easier to optimize, if you can use them.
Things like triangle splatting are useful if you have to integrate into an engine that only support triangles. But with modern graphics pipelines, you can implement Gaussians quite efficiently, including newer techniques like Gaussian point splatting that can scale up seamlessly to enormous scenes:
Bundle support in geometry nodes is huge for complex pipelines and workflows, particularly when combined with lists and closures. I have been running on the alpha builds to get access to them in my workflows.
It took me a while to properly understand it, but it's genuinely great. It maps so much more of what I expect from traditional coding, scripting etc into the visual paradigm and makes an awful lot easier to use.
Also, should out to databpy and nodebpy, both of which are indispensable and make using nodes and blender so much nicer:
Their LazyPosy channel has a video about how they made this one, difficulties, etc if you're interested in that too. More practical than technical, though it wasn't done with Blender.
Pretty cool that Gaussian Splatting is included in Blender. It always amazes me how many (sometimes pretty hidden) features Blender provides while still being rather a lean piece of software.
I believe though that Gaussian Splatting is not ideal for getting well-structured mesh data with limited vertices for typical video game usage. I'm wondering where this is going in the future.
Apparently, while Gaussian splatting is not the core technique for all world models, it has become a dominant representation and rendering backend for spatial and reconstructive world models.
Blender can be guided with Opus 5.5 to do reasonably detailed buildings and generate textures, and modify existing models, say a car, and add doors. There is still a lot of handholding, but it's good enough!
Fable 5.2 is really good at using Blender from my testing. That being said, even smaller models are good enough for junior level work, it just depends on what deliverable or metric you are looking at. Most agentic LLMs can now do low poly assets for example.
We are converging on text specification to 3D world.
Gaussian Splat technology doesn't get as much hype as it deserves.
The killer app for VR headsets is still to come.
Every time I hear about Gaussian splatting, I think about triangle splatting[0] - GPUs were built to render triangles, so I wonder what games would be like if we supported generating and rendering them as much as we do Gaussian splats.
[0] https://trianglesplatting.github.io/
The Dreams game engine (only for PS4) does this and is able to achieve scenes that no other game engine can. Here's a technical talk about how they did it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u9KNtnCZDMI
Actually sorry not sure if they use triangle splatting, but gaussian splats at least.
Pretty sure they use SDFs, not triangle or gaussian splatting
Ah thanks for the correction. The splat terminology they also use confused me.
If I recall their talk correctly, models are unions of SDFs, which get sampled into a point cloud, and each point gets splatted as another SDF primitive called a "fleck".
I think that Gaussian splatting is generally better, as the Gaussians are smoother and easier to optimize, if you can use them.
Things like triangle splatting are useful if you have to integrate into an engine that only support triangles. But with modern graphics pipelines, you can implement Gaussians quite efficiently, including newer techniques like Gaussian point splatting that can scale up seamlessly to enormous scenes:
* Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2AWv_nIfp-U
* Paper: https://jorisar.nl/gaussian_point_splatting/gaussian_point_s...
* Repo: https://github.com/JorisAR/gaussian-point-splatting
They've made a follow up to that called MeshSplatting. https://meshsplatting.github.io/
Bundle support in geometry nodes is huge for complex pipelines and workflows, particularly when combined with lists and closures. I have been running on the alpha builds to get access to them in my workflows.
It took me a while to properly understand it, but it's genuinely great. It maps so much more of what I expect from traditional coding, scripting etc into the visual paradigm and makes an awful lot easier to use.
Also, should out to databpy and nodebpy, both of which are indispensable and make using nodes and blender so much nicer:
https://github.com/BradyAJohnston/databpy https://github.com/BradyAJohnston/nodebpy
Interesting discussion from start of this year of one of the first popular music videos made with this technology. Some decent explanations in there.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46670024
Wow, that video made me instantly nauseous.
If you'd like a somewhat more sedate example: https://youtu.be/J1-yToxKOzI
Their LazyPosy channel has a video about how they made this one, difficulties, etc if you're interested in that too. More practical than technical, though it wasn't done with Blender.
Does anyone have recommendations for video / 4d splats? Are there softwares / techniques to check out? How to record, render, etc.
Thanks!
Pretty cool that Gaussian Splatting is included in Blender. It always amazes me how many (sometimes pretty hidden) features Blender provides while still being rather a lean piece of software. I believe though that Gaussian Splatting is not ideal for getting well-structured mesh data with limited vertices for typical video game usage. I'm wondering where this is going in the future.
Apparently, while Gaussian splatting is not the core technique for all world models, it has become a dominant representation and rendering backend for spatial and reconstructive world models.
For those who use Blender for work, how far are models like Astra away from using Blender to create something good enough at a junior, senior level?
Blender can be guided with Opus 5.5 to do reasonably detailed buildings and generate textures, and modify existing models, say a car, and add doors. There is still a lot of handholding, but it's good enough!
Fable 5.2 is really good at using Blender from my testing. That being said, even smaller models are good enough for junior level work, it just depends on what deliverable or metric you are looking at. Most agentic LLMs can now do low poly assets for example.
More skilled technology users get better results when asking LLMs to do technology things.
We are converging on text specification to 3D world. Gaussian Splat technology doesn't get as much hype as it deserves. The killer app for VR headsets is still to come.