[x3d-public] Gaussian splats
John Carlson
yottzumm at gmail.com
Sun Nov 30 12:32:15 PST 2025
I think the best way to create a parser for .ply binary is convert it to
ascii. Part of the issue Is that I don’t see triangles in the below spec.
So perhaps IndexedTriangleSets are out of the question. But it seems you’ve
withdrawn that. The next approach seems to be adding points to
convertPlyToJson.js.
If anyone needs a CoordinateInterpolator baker for Blender export, let me
know.
John
On Sun, Nov 30, 2025 at 11:50 AM GPU Group via x3d-public <
x3d-public at web3d.org> wrote:
> Hypothesis: Splat rendering could be done with Proto containing first
> node Shape, and with geometry node PointSet with attrib field containing
> (31.4.2) FloatVertexAttribute node with 1 float per vertex representing
> scale , a ProgrammableShader to render points as individually scaled 2D
> rectangles, a Script node to parse .ply file to PointSet, and a new node
> type FileLoader to load a .ply file for parsing.
> -Doug
> https://www.useblurry.com/blog/anatomy-of-a-ply-file
> - shows variant of .ply for gaussian splats
> - John noted Aaron's ply samples don't have spherical harmonic parameters
> (so a simpler shader)
>
> On Fri, Nov 28, 2025 at 10:24 PM Don Brutzman <don.brutzman at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
>> Just found several more interesting references relating to Gaussian
>> splats.
>>
>> - *NY Times, Spatial Journalism: A Field Guide To Gaussian Splatting*
>> - by By A.J. Chavar, Oscar Durand, Mint Boonyapanachoti
>> - December 16, 2024
>> - Gaussian splatting holds a lot of promise for 3D recreation and
>> spatial storytelling. It’s faster and more photorealistic than
>> photogrammetry, and much easier to process and interact with than neural
>> radiance fields — giving journalists and readers the best of both worlds.
>> - These advantages are due to the novel way that splats reconstruct
>> 3D scenes. In a splat, people, places, and objects are made up of a point
>> cloud defined by gaussian functions. Each gaussian function is essentially
>> a 2D disc assigned to a point in 3D space with attributes for orientation,
>> color, transparency, and size. When viewed in aggregate, these coalesce
>> into a 3D scene that can very accurately represent certain things that
>> other volumetric captures cannot: reflection, transparency, fine detail and
>> the qualities of the light in a scene.
>> - In this guide, we give an overview of the practical takeaways we
>> learned exploring exploring gaussian splatting for spatial journalism. We
>> tested a variety of capture and processing techniques using a variety of
>> hardware and software, and found solutions on desktop and mobile devices.
>> We also assessed splatting against the benchmarks we typically associate
>> with photogrammetry, the current standard for 3D recreation.
>> - https://rd.nytimes.com/projects/gaussian-splatting-guide
>>
>>
>> - *NY Times, Spatial Journalism: Pushing the Limits of Gaussian
>> Splatting for Spatial Storytelling*
>> - By AJ Chavar, Mint Boonyapanchoti, Juan Cabrera, Oscar Durand,
>> Yasmin Elayat, Claudia Miranda, Kojo Opuni
>> - December 16, 2024
>> - Abstract. Advancements in capturing and rendering 3D scenes have
>> the potential to create spatial stories faster and more easily than has
>> previously been possible. Building off of our earlier experiments with
>> photogrammetry and neural radiance fields (NeRF), R&D, with support from
>> the Graphics Department, set out to understand gaussian splatting and
>> continue to explore the future of photography and 3D media. Modern gaussian
>> splatting caught our eye after "3D Gaussian Splatting for Real-Time
>> Radiance Field Rendering" was named one of the best papers of SIGGRAPH
>> 2023. While photogrammetry is a tried-and-tested method, it’s extremely
>> labor- and compute- intensive, and it reliably fails to reconstruct certain
>> textures and settings. NeRF technology addresses some of these concerns,
>> but is extremely difficult to deliver these radiance fields to audiences.
>> We wanted to see how splatting fared under similar circumstances.
>> - https://rd.nytimes.com/projects/gaussian-splatting
>>
>>
>> - *3D Gaussian Splatting for Real-Time Radiance Field Rendering*
>> - SIGGRAPH 2023 (ACM Transactions on Graphics)
>> - Bernhard Kerbl* 1,2 Georgios Kopanas* 1,2 Thomas
>> Leimkühler3 George Drettakis1,2
>> - Abstract. Radiance Field methods have recently revolutionized
>> novel-view synthesis of scenes captured with multiple photos or videos.
>> However, achieving high visual quality still requires neural networks that
>> are costly to train and render, while recent faster methods inevitably
>> trade off speed for quality. For unbounded and complete scenes (rather than
>> isolated objects) and 1080p resolution rendering, no current method can
>> achieve real-time display rates.
>> - We introduce three key elements that allow us to achieve
>> state-of-the-art visual quality while maintaining competitive training
>> times and importantly allow high-quality real-time (≥ 100 fps) novel-view
>> synthesis at 1080p resolution.
>> - First, starting from sparse points produced during camera
>> calibration, we represent the scene with 3D Gaussians that preserve
>> desirable properties of continuous volumetric radiance fields for scene
>> optimization while avoiding unnecessary computation in empty space; Second,
>> we perform interleaved optimization/density control of the 3D Gaussians,
>> notably optimizing anisotropic covariance to achieve an accurate
>> representation of the scene; Third, we develop a fast visibility-aware
>> rendering algorithm that supports anisotropic splatting and both
>> accelerates training and allows realtime rendering. We demonstrate
>> state-of-the-art visual quality and real-time rendering on several
>> established datasets.
>> - https://repo-sam.inria.fr/fungraph/3d-gaussian-splatting
>>
>>
>> all the best, Don
>> --
>> X3D Graphics, Maritime Robotics, Distributed Simulation
>> Relative Motion Consulting https://RelativeMotion.info
>>
>>
>> On Fri, Nov 28, 2025 at 9:04 PM Don Brutzman <don.brutzman at gmail.com>
>> wrote:
>>
>>> Thank you for exploring this topic Doug. Interesting developments.
>>>
>>> Traditionally .ply files have been used for defining triangles or
>>> polygonal mesh, similar in many ways to .stl files.
>>>
>>> Possible future extension for X3D Architecture is to define a new
>>> InlineGeometry node that can read .stl or ply files to create a coordinate
>>> mesh, returning a Coordinate node perhaps. Such offline conversions for
>>> scanned meshes are possible now.
>>>
>>> However, am not sure how gaussian splats can utilize the .ply format.
>>> This seems like a relatively new development - do you know where that is
>>> written up?
>>>
>>> PLY references follow.
>>>
>>> - Wikipedia PLY (file format)
>>> - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PLY_(file_format)
>>>
>>>
>>> - Internet Archive: The PLY Polygon File Format, Author: Greg Turk
>>> -
>>> https://web.archive.org/web/20161204152348/http://www.dcs.ed.ac.uk/teaching/cs4/www/graphics/Web/ply.html
>>>
>>>
>>> - Wikipedia: Gaussian splatting
>>> - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaussian_splatting
>>> - (no mention of files or formats that i saw)
>>>
>>> Since there is a lot of innovation ongoing with Gaussian splats, we want
>>> to be thorough and careful when looking at potential X3D standardization.
>>>
>>> all the best, Don
>>> --
>>> X3D Graphics, Maritime Robotics, Distributed Simulation
>>> Relative Motion Consulting https://RelativeMotion.info
>>>
>>>
>>> On Sat, Nov 22, 2025 at 9:31 AM GPU Group via x3d-public <
>>> x3d-public at web3d.org> wrote:
>>>
>>>> "Gaussian Splatting"
>>>> .ply files appear to deliver similar polygons as X3D IndexedTriangleSet
>>>> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PLY_(file_format)
>>>> https://www.web3d.org/documents/specifications/19775-1/V4.0/index.html
>>>> Methods to get .ply into x3d scene:
>>>> 0. pre-process with non-browser tool to convert to x3d scene snippet
>>>> for inlining
>>>> 1. Special new IndexedTriangleSetPly node with a url field
>>>> 2. Proto containing i) first node IndexedTriangleSet, ii) Script node
>>>> to process ply into IndexedTriangleSet, and either:
>>>> a) SAI function for javascript to read an arbitrary file url into a
>>>> blob for processing from ply to IndexedTriangleSet by javascript
>>>> b) a new node type that reads an arbitrary file into an SFImage as a
>>>> blob, a route to move the SFImage to Script for processing from ply to
>>>> IndexedTriangleSet
>>>> Q. or is there another method that's easier / already working?
>>>> -Doug
>>>>
>>>> On Tue, Nov 18, 2025 at 9:31 AM Bergstrom, Aaron via x3d-public <
>>>> x3d-public at web3d.org> wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> X3D and AI Stakeholders,
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> Please join us for the X3D-AI Working Group meeting this * Wed, Nov
>>>>> 19th* at *2pm GMT* (*9am US Eastern* – *6am Pacific*)
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> The agenda for this week will include the following topics:
>>>>>
>>>>> - Metaverse Standards Forum - AI Working Group
>>>>> - Gaussian Splatting – Proposed Node Text
>>>>> - AI Assisted Content Creation
>>>>> - Near-term Activities of the X3D-AI Working Group
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> The Zoom link for the meeting and a more detailed agenda can be found
>>>>> at the Calendar link below
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> https://www.web3d.org/calendar/2800/x3d-ai-working-group-meeting/2025-11-19t140000-2025-12-17t140000-2026-01-21t140000
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> Hope to see everyone there,
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> Aaron Bergstrom
>>>>>
>>>>> X3D-AI Working Group Chair
>>>>>
>>>>> https://www.web3d.org/working-groups/ai-x3d
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>>> x3d-public mailing list
>>>>> x3d-public at web3d.org
>>>>> http://web3d.org/mailman/listinfo/x3d-public_web3d.org
>>>>>
>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>> x3d-public mailing list
>>>> x3d-public at web3d.org
>>>> http://web3d.org/mailman/listinfo/x3d-public_web3d.org
>>>>
>>> _______________________________________________
> x3d-public mailing list
> x3d-public at web3d.org
> http://web3d.org/mailman/listinfo/x3d-public_web3d.org
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://web3d.org/pipermail/x3d-public_web3d.org/attachments/20251130/700a25ab/attachment-0001.html>
More information about the x3d-public
mailing list