Gaussian Splats

A Gaussian splat is a 3D capture made of millions of small, soft, colored blobs called splats. Seen together, they rebuild a real scene from the photos or video it was captured from. The web viewer treats a splat as one object. You can't open it into parts the way you can with a mesh.

The released versions of the 3DtoMe apps for iPhone, iPad, Mac and Vision Pro don't open splats yet. The embed viewer on your website doesn't either. To show a splat to someone, send them a link to the project in the web viewer.

You add a splat the same way as a mesh. Drop the file on the Scene tab of an open project, or pick it when you create a new project. See Create a project and upload models for the steps.

You can upload a splat as a PLY or SOG file, or as a ZIP or SSOG archive that contains a SOG. A few rules to know before you upload:

• The viewer reads every PLY file as a Gaussian splat. To upload a mesh saved as PLY, convert it to GLB first.
• A ZIP that holds a mesh fails to convert. The viewer shows Couldn't add the model and keeps the file in the project's assets.
• There is no file size limit. A large file can take too long to convert and fail. If that happens, reduce the file size and upload it again.

A splat sits in the same scene as your meshes, but not every viewer tool works on it:

You place annotations and comments by clicking the splat, the same as on a mesh.

Phones and tablets show fewer splats than computers. On a large capture, you see less detail far from the camera until you zoom in. To keep a splat sharp on phones, crop it to the area that matters before you upload it.

• Shiny surfaces can look flatter in the web viewer than in your original PLY. Reflections and highlights don't change as you move the camera.
• The viewer draws about 5 million splats at once on a computer, 3 million on iPhone and iPad, and 2 million on Android.