PlayCanvas Engine 2.3 Released

PlayCanvas continues to push out updates that affect their 3DGS editor and visualizer with the release of Engine 2.3.0.

Starting off the updates, Spherical Harmonics have been added to compressed PLY format. This has some really interesting implications. This means that the hyper-real hallmark of the Radiance Field method, Gaussian Splatting will still be retained in the compressed version, when it is run through their pipeline. This is really exciting because it means people’s captures will look extra real, while still being flexible in size.

Additionally, another large change was merged into the Engine for this release and it’s a new shader architecture with several updates, all of which make it much easier to write custom shaders using the hyper real radiance fields. 

The compressed and uncompressed Gaussian Splat material shaders are now unified, providing a single streamlined system. This means it’s now easier than even to write custom shaders for Gaussian Splatting. You don’t need to worry about whether the data is in its original form or compressed when building shaders.

Leveraging preprocessor directives such as #include and #if, the shader code is now modularized, enabling better organization and readability. This modularity also simplifies the process of enabling or disabling features for specific rendering needs.

Developers can now introduce custom implementations for specific shader operations through chunk overrides, paving the way for enhanced flexibility and experimentation.

Both SuperSplat and the larger PlayCanvas Engine remain free and permissibly licensed. Most recently, SuperSplat was merged into Arrival Space for people to edit their captures in the interactive environment.