SplatRenderer
SplatRenderer is a free, Apache 2.0 Unreal Engine 5.5 to 5.7 plugin from Dazai Studio that renders static 3D Gaussian Splats and plays back 4D Gaussian Splat sequences with synced audio and Level Sequencer control.
Platform
Unreal Engine 5.5, 5.6 and 5.7 plugin, Windows (DirectX 12)
GPU
None published as a minimum. Rendering runs in Unreal compute shaders on Windows with DirectX 12, and Dazai Studio quotes 2M+ Gaussians at 100+ FPS on an RTX 4080
Pricing
Free
License
Apache 2.0
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Best for
3DGS and 4DGS playback and cinematics inside Unreal Engine
Updated
July 2026
SplatRenderer is an Unreal Engine plugin from Dazai Studio that renders 3D and 4D Gaussian Splats in real time. Dazai Studio released it on GitHub in March 2026 under the Apache 2.0 licence, with v1.0.0 published on March 18, 2026 for Unreal Engine 5.6 on Windows and DirectX 12, and v1.0.1 adding builds for 5.5 and 5.7 the following day.
The plugin ships two Blueprint actors. BP_3DGS loads any standard 3DGS .ply file, including output from COLMAP based trainers, Luma and Postshot, and BP_4DGS plays a 4D Gaussian Splat sequence stored in Dazai Studio's own .gsd format, with optional WAV audio synced to playback. A separate open source 4DGS Converter turns 4DGS training output into .gsd files, which the project page says compresses sequences roughly five to eight times using LZ4 and vector quantization. Both actors expose brightness and splat scale controls and an oriented crop box with a draggable editor widget.
SplatRenderer v1.1.0, released April 1, 2026, added Level Sequencer integration for the 4DGS actor, so brightness, splat scale, playback speed, audio volume, crop and a ScrubFrame parameter can be keyframed alongside cameras and lights. ScrubFrame gives frame accurate control over which frame of a sequence appears at any point on the timeline. v1.1.2 followed on April 5, 2026 with a shutdown crash fix, corrected shader packaging and precompiled binaries, so the release zips install into a project's Plugins folder without source compilation.
The Dazai Studio project page describes a GPU only pipeline built on Unreal's RenderGraph API, with frustum and crop volume culling before the sort, a sort pass that is skipped while the camera is still, and background thread decompression of upcoming 4DGS frames. It quotes 2M+ Gaussians at 100+ FPS on an RTX 4080. The same page describes an optional compute shader system that applies noise, wind, gravity and vortex forces to individual Gaussians, a feature the GitHub README does not list among the released features.
SplatRenderer is free, with no paid tier, and support runs through GitHub Issues and Discussions.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is SplatRenderer?
SplatRenderer is a free, open source Unreal Engine plugin from Dazai Studio that renders static 3D Gaussian Splats from .ply files and plays back 4D Gaussian Splat sequences, with synced audio, a crop volume and Level Sequencer keyframing.
Which Unreal Engine versions does SplatRenderer support?
SplatRenderer v1.1.2 ships precompiled builds for Unreal Engine 5.5, 5.6 and 5.7 on Windows, and the first release listed DirectX 12 as a requirement.
Is SplatRenderer free for commercial use?
SplatRenderer is free and licensed under Apache 2.0, a permissive licence that allows commercial use provided the licence and notices are retained.
How does SplatRenderer play 4D Gaussian Splats?
SplatRenderer plays 4DGS sequences stored in Dazai Studio's .gsd format, which its companion 4DGS Converter produces from 4DGS training output, and since v1.1.0 those sequences can be scrubbed and keyframed in Unreal's Level Sequencer.
How does SplatRenderer compare with NanoGS?
SplatRenderer focuses on 3DGS and 4DGS playback and cinematic control in Unreal Engine 5.5 to 5.7, while NanoGS by Tim Chen focuses on rendering very large static splat scenes with Nanite style LOD clusters in Unreal Engine 5.6 and 5.7.
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