Kiri Engine gets support for 3D Gaussian Splatting
Originally posted on 22 November 2023. Scroll down for news of the Kiri Engine 3.7 update.
Kiri Innovations has updated Kiri Engine, its 3D scanning app for Android and iOS devices.
The 3.0 update added support for new AI-based 3D reconstruction technique 3D Gaussian Splatting (3DGS) – something that Kiri Innovations claims is a first for Android.
More recent updates make it possible to edit the 3DGS data inside the app to clean up the scan, and to export it in PLY or OBJ format for use in DCC applications and game engines.
A free AI-enhanced 3D scanning app for Android as well as Apple phones
First released in 2022, Kiri Engine is a 3D scanning app for Android and iOS devices.
It began as a photogrammetry tool, reconstructing 3D models from source photos of real-world objects, and uses AI techniques for object masking and noise removal.
Recent updates have added support for Neural Surface Reconstruction, and Lidar scanning on iOS devices.
Create and view 3D Gaussian Splats on both iOS and Android
To that, Kiri Engine adds support for new 3D reconstruction technique 3D Gaussian Splatting.
Like photogrammetry, it begins by generating a point cloud of a 3D object or scene from a set of source photos, but rather than converting the point cloud to a textured mesh, it converts it to gaussians, using machine learning to determined the correct color for each one.
The result is a high-quality and potentially fast-rendering 3D representation of the object or scene being scanned.
Although other 3D scanning apps like Polycam support the creation and viewing of 3D Gaussian Splats in their iOS editions – Polycam also has a free online splat creator and viewer – Kiri Innovations claims that Kiri Engine is the first Android app to do so.
Now possible to clean up the 3DGS data and export it in PLY or OBJ format
Although in Kiri Engine 3.0, it was only possible to generate HTML code to embed raw 3DGS data in a website, subsequent updates have made it possible to export the scan.
The 3.3 and 3.4 updates made it possible to export the 3DGS data in PLY format.
Although few DCC applications currently support 3DGS natively, there are free add-ons for importing and rendering 3DGS data in Unity and, more recently, Unreal Engine.
For DCC applications like Blender, the current 3.7 update adds experimental support for generating a mesh from the 3DGS data and exporting it in OBJ format.
New cropping tools also make it possible to remove unwanted gaussians from the scan.
Pricing and system requirements
Kiri Engine 3.7 is available for Android 7.0 and iOS 15.0. The new 3DGS functionality is only available to users with paid Pro accounts.
The app itself is free to download. Free Basic accounts include photogrammetry, Lidar scanning and Object Capture, and can export three 3D scans from the cloud per week.
Pro accounts cost $14.99/month or $59.99/year, make it possible to export an unlimited number of scans from the cloud, and unlock advanced features.
Download Kiri Engine for Android from Google Play
Download Kiri Engine for iOS from the iOS App Store
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