04.03 Gaussian Splatting
Gaussian Splatting is a method of using “splats” or gaussian “smears” to rebuild a 3D scene rather than a mesh. It became more well known from a Siggraph 2023 3D Gaussian Splatting Paper . It is a technique that overcomes some of the limitations of photogrammetry when creating 3D representations from photographic sources. Since the technology is relatively new, it is computationally intensive but will likely be a large part of the future of 3D modeling and representation
Carl Friedrich Gauss was a mathematician with numerous original ideas and discoveries that influence everyone’s lives. Gaussian splats use overlapping gaussian blur “smudges” that overlap and in totality produce a coherent image.
Gaussian Splatting Links and Software
Colmap
Colmap has a Graphical User Interface (GUI) that can make using Colmap easier than the command line. To use the GUI download the precompiled binary, extract it, and run the bat file.
Glomap
Glomap can be 2 - 10 times faster in recontruction than Colmap. It also has a precompiled binary but must be run from the command line. Glomap required Colmap to build the initial database before running reconstruction.