3DGS Render 5.0 lets you animate Gaussian Splats inside Blender
3D scanning tools developer Kiri Innovations has released 3DGS Render 5.0, the latest version of its open-source tool for visualizing 3D Gaussian Splats inside Blender.
The update makes it possible to animate Gaussian Splats inside Blender by baking animation to them from a proxy mesh, like a conventional rigged 3D character.
A new technique for generating 3D scans from images of real-world objects
3D Gaussian Splatting provides a new way to reconstruct real-world objects from source images or video and render them in 3D.
Like photogrammetry, it begins by generating a point cloud of an 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 determine the correct color for each.
The result is a high-quality and potentially fast-rendering 3D representation of the object or scene being scanned.
An increasing number of applications can now generate 3DGS data, one obvious example being Kiri Innovations’ own 3D scanning app, Kiri Engine.
Manipulate and render 3DGS data directly inside Blender with 3DGS Render
3DGS Render makes it possible to import 3DGS data into Blender in PLY format and edit it, cleaning up raw scans by cropping away unwanted regions, or merging separate scans.
Imported Splats can be manipulated like standard Blender objects, with users able to move or rescale them, retexture and relight them, and render them using Blender’s Eevee renderer.
It is also possible to convert conventional meshes into 3DGS PLY files, for export to other software that supports Gaussian Splats.
3DGS Render 5.0: transfer animation from a proxy mesh to Gaussian Splats
To that, 3DGS Render 5.0 makes it possible animate Gaussian Splats inside Blender.
Although the add-on could already apply simple animated effects, the update takes things much further, making it possible to transfer deformations on a proxy mesh to a 3DGS object.
That effectively makes 3DGS objects animatable using standard armatures, by using a rigged 3D character as the proxy mesh, animating it in the standard way, then transferring the animation.
The animated Gaussian Splat can then be baked to a sequence of PLY files and exported to other software.
It is also possible to bake lighting information from the proxy mesh to the 3DGS object.
The video above shows the workflow, transferring a stock animation from Mixamo to a scanned character. The feature is still experimental, and performance isn’t great yet, but it works.
Pricing and system requirements
3DGS Render 5.0 is compatible with Blender 5.1. It’s a free download. The source code is available under an Apache 2.0 license.
Download 3DGS Render 5.0 from the plugin’s Superhive page
Read a full list of new features in 3DGS Render 5.0 in Kiri Innovations’ GitHub repository
(The changelog is in a .txt file)
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