Gaussian Splats
A Gaussian Splat object draws a captured scene — a room, a garden, a person — as millions of soft, coloured ellipsoids. It sits in a 3D track alongside point clouds, SDF shapes and meshes, shares their depth buffer, and takes the same displacement as a point cloud.
Adding a splat
Section titled “Adding a splat”- Add a 3D track
- Click Insert 3D Object → Gaussian Splat
- In the SPLAT PLAYLIST section, click + and pick one or more files
Supported files:
| Format | Notes |
|---|---|
.splat | The compact antimatter15 format |
.ply | Inria-style 3DGS export (Postshot, Polycam, Luma, etc.) |
.sog | Spatially Ordered Gaussians (PlayCanvas / SuperSplat) |
The Input row at the top of the card switches between:
| Input | Description |
|---|---|
| Splat Files | A playlist of splat files, described on this page |
| Live Texture | Lifts a live track into 3D splats in real time. See Live Depth → |
The splat playlist
Section titled “The splat playlist”A splat object holds a playlist, like a video player. Switch items with the Prev/Next row, Autoplay, or the mappable per-item triggers.
Right-click a playlist item for splat-specific options:
| Option | Description |
|---|---|
| Axis Convention | Auto-detect, Y-Down (Inria / Postshot) or Z-Up (Survey / RealityCapture). Change it if a capture loads on its side or upside down |
| Max Splats | Downsampling budget for this item (see below) |
| Remove disk cache & reload | Throws away the cached decode and loads the file again |
Transitions
Section titled “Transitions”Turn on Transition to blend from one item to the next instead of cutting. The controls — Duration, Style, Amount and Curve — are the same as the point cloud playlist’s. See Point Clouds → Transitions.
Displacement and the particle sim keep running through a transition, so the motion carries over instead of resetting.
Splat data
Section titled “Splat data”The SPLAT DATA section shows the selected item’s file name and splat count.
Max Splats sets how much of a large capture is kept when it loads: Full Resolution, 4M, 2M, 1M, 500K, 250K or 100K. When a file is reduced, a Source row shows the original count. Lower budgets load faster and render faster. The choice is saved per item with the project.
Placement
Section titled “Placement”Every capture lands in its own coordinate frame. The PLACEMENT section corrects the selected item without touching the others or the object’s transform.
| Control | Description |
|---|---|
| Item Scale | Uniform scale for this item |
| Origin X / Y / Z | Shifts the item’s pivot |
| Rotate X / Y / Z | Reorients the item’s content |
| Flip Y | Mirrors the item vertically — for exports that come in upside down or mirrored, which rotation alone can’t fix |
| Reset | Back to no offset, no rotation, 1× scale |
Placement rotation turns the content itself. That matters for Directional Flow: the flow direction stays fixed, so you rotate a road or tunnel scan to line it up with the travel axis.
Render
Section titled “Render”| Control | Description |
|---|---|
| World Scale | Scales the whole cloud, positions and splat sizes together, so it grows or shrinks without going sparse |
| Size | Scales each splat’s radius without moving it. Low values break the scene into separate dots |
| Opacity | Multiplies every splat’s opacity. 1 is as authored |
| Cutoff σ | How far each splat’s soft edge is drawn. Lower is faster with harder edges |
| Lighting | Blends from the splat’s own baked colour (0, the classic splat look) to being lit by the track’s 3D lights (1) |
| Pixel Mix | Fades the splat colour towards white. At 0 the scene becomes a white clay model shaped only by lighting — useful for projection onto physical surfaces |
| Render as Point Cloud | Draws the splat through the point cloud renderer instead, as points |
All the sliders are mappable.
Lighting and shadows
Section titled “Lighting and shadows”Raise Lighting above 0 and each splat is shaded by the 3D track’s lights, including spot cones and the track’s ambient level.
With Lighting above 0, splats also cast shadows when SHADOWS is on in the track’s Lighting settings. Shadows radiate from the first light in the scene, wherever it sits — including inside the scan, like a bulb in a room capture. They fade with distance from the surface that casts them, so a dense scan doesn’t turn into a solid black slab. Splats also cast shadows onto point clouds in the same track.
Set Lighting to 1 and Pixel Mix to 0 for a fully relit clay look, then bring Pixel Mix back up to return the original colour.
Colorizer
Section titled “Colorizer”The HSV COLORIZER section recolours the splats by position, motion or age. It is the same colorizer as the point cloud’s — see Point Clouds → HSV Colorizer.
Displacement
Section titled “Displacement”Splats take the same displacement as point clouds: noise, audio, directional flow, fluid, the particle sim and track displacement all apply. Use the Point Cloud Displacement card below the object cards. See Point Cloud Displacement →.
The STATS section shows how many splats are loaded and how many are visible after culling.