Gaussian Splatting

Gaussian Splatting has really shaken up the volumetric capture and rendering scene over the past year or so. This technology allows for intricate, detailed volumetric captures that also maintain qualities such as reflections and other view-dependent effects. They can also be quite lightweight, making them a great option for realtime applications in web and XR.

There’s so much great work happening in this space right now, so I thought I’d share some examples:

GaussianAvatars
This research from Technical University of Munich and Toyota shows morphable, animatable gaussian head scans being driven by a video of another head or manipulated through parameters.

GaussianAvatars: Photorealistic Head Avatars with Rigged 3D Gaussians

Infinite-Realities
This Ipswich-based volumetric capture studio has done some excellent work showcasing the potential of high quality motion scans.

Spatial Memories

Postshot
If you want to get started with gaussian splatting, Postshot’s a great toolkit for creating both NeRFs and gaussian splats. You provide a collection of photos or a video of a scene you want to turn into a 3D model, and Potshot trains a model on the input, giving you a live preview as it reconstructs the scene. What’s great about Postshot is you can use the software to bring your 3D captures into After Effects projects.

Postshot Beta Release v0.3