This Week in 3DGS

The weekly Gaussian splatting show, with every link

Every Monday, Michael Rubloff covers the week in Gaussian splatting and radiance fields. Each episode below has the video, its chapters, and every link from the show, plus the stories that were cut for time. Jump to an episode or keep scrolling.

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Daily coverage

Episode 7 · October 5, 2026 · 15:20

AMD Buys World Labs, Pixar’s RenderMan 28 Will Add Splats

AMD is buying World Labs for $8.2 billion, and the whole product line it just bought is Gaussian splatting. This week also covers Pixar’s RenderMan 28 adding native Gaussian splat rendering, Gausser bringing splats into Cinema 4D as a node, Chaos Vantage relighting a splat live inside Houdini Solaris, a free clone-stamp and healing brush for splats in Blender, Niantic Spatial’s 100 sim-ready real places, Esri’s ArcGIS Earth 3.0 splat layers, Open3D 0.20, Spatial Slideshow confirming Apple’s Reframe model runs on splats, a free splat viewer for Valve’s Steam Frame, BICEP’s new music video, two research papers, and a dragon-fruit farm rebuilt as a 3D twin.

Chapters

  • 0:00 AMD buys World Labs, Pixar adds splats: the week in one minute

  • 0:25 Sponsor: Miris

  • 0:40 AMD to acquire World Labs for $8.2 billion: Marble, Atlas, Spark and what happens next

  • 2:12 RenderMan 28 brings native Gaussian splats to Pixar’s renderer

  • 4:13 Gausser puts Gaussian splats inside Cinema 4D as a node

  • 5:08 The Gaussian splatting engine and plugin directory

  • 5:27 Chaos Vantage ray traces and relights a splat live inside Houdini Solaris

  • 6:12 Gaussian Splat Patch: clone stamp and healing brush for splats in Blender 5.3

  • 6:38 Niantic Spatial Places Library: 100 real places, sim-ready for Isaac Sim

  • 6:57 Esri ArcGIS Earth 3.0 adds Gaussian splat layers

  • 7:36 Open3D 0.20 renders Gaussian splats for the first time

  • 8:11 Spatial Slideshow 0.9 confirms Apple’s Reframe runs on Gaussian splats

  • 9:07 Arcturus Vision Gaussian XR: a free splat viewer on Steam Frame

  • 9:42 BICEP’s Viper music video rebuilds the room in 3D

  • 10:03 Community: Berto Mora melts a Thai temple in Notch

  • 10:15 Dave Webster’s swimming flowers in Houdini

  • 10:38 Doors of Perception: a closed exhibition you can walk through

  • 11:07 Ontia and Splatimation: golf courses and ski mountains in the browser

  • 11:38 Paper: lens flares removed, then rebuilt as 3D objects

  • 12:22 Paper: PowerSim couples a radiance field to a physics engine

  • 13:13 ColmapView 15 publishes your whole project to Hugging Face

  • 13:32 gsplat-talkinghead: lip-synced splat avatars in the browser

  • 13:57 A dragon-fruit farm rebuilt as a 3D twin

  • 14:30 Outro

Links from the episode

Also this week, cut for time

ChronoFuseGS (TU Wien). Merges separately trained splat models of the same site into one and records, for every Gaussian, which capture dates it belongs to, so a span of dates lights up only what changed. Tested on a Vienna flood-control site flown eight times across seasons, with dataset and code released.

Scan The Wild. A 24-camera rig that scans people in real time as they walk past, with a browser page that morphs between 21 of those scans live.

Iowa State Capitol, orthographic. Joey Wittmann rendered the capitol straight down out of SuperSplat, a look you cannot get from a normal perspective viewport.

This episode was sponsored by Miris, delivery infrastructure for 3D. Try it free at miris.com/podcast.

Episode 6 · September 28, 2026 · 9:24

Spirula Studio Is Taking Over Gaussian Splatting

Spirula Studio went from new to everywhere in one week. This episode covers the free, open-source training platform that took over the feed, Insta360 Spatial Capture launching in the US on the X6, X5 and X4 Air, 4D Gaussian splatting at the ATHLOS London finish line, a 12-iPhone genlocked 4DGS rig, Houdini’s push into splats at the SideFX Equinox event, and Magnopus pushing 268 million splats inside Unreal Engine.

Chapters

  • 0:00 Intro

  • 0:17 Spirula Studio explodes: one preset, 360 fisheye training, editor and MCP server update

  • 1:56 Houdini 22 Gaussian splatting workflows at the SideFX Equinox event

  • 2:24 New jobs: Netflix and Fox

  • 2:48 4DGS in sports: Arcturus Sports captures the ATHLOS London finishes

  • 3:29 A 12-iPhone genlocked 4DGS rig from Anvizino

  • 3:47 The Adidas × Amazon Gaussian splatting commercial gets an award nomination

  • 4:06 SuperSplat tutorial update and relighting a splat with point lights

  • 4:45 Insta360 Spatial Capture is live in the US, and KIRI Engine confirms the partnership

  • 5:23 Meta Connect holograms: are they Gaussian splats?

  • 5:49 LichtFeld Studio 0.5.4 previews: gallery, library, and a Mac port tease

  • 6:39 Deckard Slate: Deckard Render becomes a standalone app

  • 7:08 ANNX Studio launches cloud reconstruction

  • 7:20 Structure from motion in the browser drops memory use 5×

  • 7:35 Community: Bilawal Sidhu on capturing the fourth dimension

  • 8:22 A Korean library scanned with a single Insta360 X5

  • 8:37 Magnopus: 268 million splats in Unreal Engine with LOD

  • 9:07 Outro

Links from the episode

Episode 5 · September 21, 2026 · 15:53

Native Splats in Blender, Four New Scanners, and Esri Goes Street-Level

Blender 5.3’s alpha adds native Gaussian splat support, PLY and SPZ v4 across Workbench, EEVEE and Cycles, with release expected November 10. At INTERGEO in Munich, FARO announced the Rovi i.1, XGRIDS formally introduced the L3, and Green Valley launched the LiGrip O2 Pro and LiCam. Plus Esri bridging street-level and aerial capture, Insta360 bringing cloud processing to the US, World Labs running DOOM and Quake entirely in splats, and a new F1 dataset called Monaco 4D.

Chapters

  • 0:00 Intro

  • 0:16 Sponsor: Teleport

  • 0:34 Blender 5.3 adds native Gaussian splats

  • 1:48 INTERGEO 2026 in Munich

  • 2:06 FARO Rovi i.1

  • 2:27 Green Valley: LiGrip O2 Pro and LiCam

  • 3:38 XGRIDS L3

  • 5:10 Esri: bridging ground and aerial

  • 6:48 Insta360 cloud processing comes to the US

  • 7:56 Fashion Week to splat in under an hour

  • 8:53 World Labs: DOOM and Quake entirely in splats

  • 9:21 Relightable and interactive splats

  • 9:55 Erik Natzke’s Apple SHARP photo editor

  • 10:28 250 million splats in Octane

  • 10:53 Apple’s fall event

  • 11:14 CarveOut and Gauzilla Pro

  • 11:52 Racing in Volume with Flow Ensembles

  • 12:34 Peripheral Labs and the NBA

  • 12:58 Framestore’s Superman webinar

  • 13:14 Who’s hiring

  • 13:39 LichtFeld Studio beta

  • 14:10 Tamaya Resort

  • 14:24 Where this is all going

Links from the episode

This episode was sponsored by Teleport from Varjo. Check out Teleport.

Episode 4 · September 14, 2026 · 12:08

SuperSplat 3.0, three.js Goes Native, 4DGS at Home

One of the biggest weeks yet: PlayCanvas shipped SuperSplat 3.0, three.js added native Gaussian splatting in r186, World Labs pushed Spark 2.2 with Atlas early access coming, and 4D Gaussian splatting showed up everywhere from a four-camera Raspberry Pi rig to Superman. Also: Intergeo, the Pocket 3D SLAM scanner, Sony’s first fisheye zoom, the Meridian rig test shoot, three research papers, and NVIDIA NuRec in physical AI.

Chapters

  • 0:00 This week in Gaussian splatting

  • 0:43 SuperSplat 3.0: global sorting and WebGPU

  • 1:35 three.js r186 adds native Gaussian splatting

  • 1:55 GaussianSplats3D and Spark 2.2

  • 2:15 Atlas early access and FrameBoy

  • 3:04 Intergeo 2026

  • 3:18 Pocket 3D SLAM scanner

  • 3:40 Sony 8-14mm fisheye zoom

  • 4:05 4D Gaussian splatting

  • 4:11 Meridian rig test shoot, 56 iPhone 17 Pros

  • 4:33 4DGS rigs at home: Raspberry Pi cameras

  • 5:00 4DAnyone bullet time from one camera

  • 5:26 Venice Immersive 2026 awards

  • 5:49 MCK “OM=T”: 150 clones on a MacBook Pro

  • 6:20 4DGS in Superman: Framestore webinar

  • 6:45 Community: Panthera splat, crash-site splat, Harakbut Face v2, 3DGS oil painting, VRED

  • 8:10 Research: Heat Kernel Textures, Gaussian Light Transport, ENEAS

  • 8:56 Physical AI: NVIDIA NuRec and Li Auto

  • 10:17 Gaussian splatting jobs

  • 10:42 Where this series is going

Links from the episode

Episode 3 · September 8, 2026 · 12:30

Atlas, 4DAnyone Turbo, and XGRIDS Ships Twice

GPT-6 took most of the oxygen last week, but Gaussian splatting had its own week: World Labs announced Atlas, 4DAnyone got small enough to run on a 3090, XGRIDS shipped twice and teased a new camera, and three 4D splat films opened at the Venice Biennale. Generative and reconstruction are converging faster than most people expected, and this is what that looked like in seven days.

Chapters

  • 0:00 GPT-6 week, and what it meant for splatting

  • 0:19 What Radiance Fields tracks

  • 0:29 World Labs releases Atlas

  • 0:58 Bullet time, and revising where the tech actually is

  • 1:12 A multi-room capture from 30 images

  • 1:28 The Stanford campus, reconstructed from the ground

  • 1:40 The a16z conversation with the founding team

  • 1:49 Ben Mildenhall on pose, precision, and 50–100× fewer images

  • 2:52 Atlas early access, and what’s next for Spark

  • 3:09 MIMAP 3.2 merges aerial and ground data

  • 3:14 NVIDIA speeds up ray-traced radiance fields

  • 3:23 XGRIDS LCC Studio 2.4: USD and ArcGIS 3D Tiles export

  • 3:33 LCC Scan adds on-device iPhone reconstruction

  • 3:47 Local training in Gaussian SplatKing

  • 4:01 MetalGauss: building your own iPhone splat app

  • 4:16 COLMAP 4.2 and better 360 support

  • 4:25 A 360-to-TouchDesigner pipeline

  • 4:36 360SplatPro 1.4.9

  • 4:50 Splats in 3ds Max via tyFlow, and Autodesk 2027.2

  • 5:10 Every platform and plugin that supports splatting

  • 5:23 A radiance field made of lines, not Gaussians

  • 5:38 Replacing spherical harmonics with a neural appearance model

  • 6:23 Inside ByteDance’s approach to 4D

  • 6:43 4DAnyone Turbo runs on a 3090

  • 7:18 Jonathan Stephens’ 4DAnyone results

  • 7:41 Three 4D splat films at the Venice Biennale

  • 7:58 Out of the Ashes, and the Eaton fire

  • 8:29 Why lifelike 3D carries a responsibility

  • 9:10 IBC, INTERGEO, and a new Lixel camera

  • 9:30 What that camera probably is

  • 10:15 From the community: infrared in Japan

  • 10:40 Jobs: Esri, Amazon, and the board

  • 11:11 The full Rising Sun Pictures conversation on Sinners

  • 11:25 Where this is all heading

  • 11:46 Did the longer format work?

Links from the episode

Episode 2 · August 31, 2026 · 7:20

Blender, KIRI 5.1, LichtFeld, and KISS-GS

Blender’s own developers are building Gaussian splatting into Blender. That happened alongside four separate Blender add-ons shipping in a single week, a 3× training speedup in LichtFeld Studio, and movie scenes rebuilt as splats that had everyone arguing about what they were looking at.

Chapters

  • 0:00 Movie splats trending again

  • 0:18 Blender’s own team is building splat support

  • 0:45 Point Cloud Merger: COLMAP alignment in Blender

  • 0:53 KIRI Engine 3DGS Render 5.1.0

  • 1:14 PCD Splatter turns E57 scans into splats

  • 1:25 LichtFeld Studio gets 3× faster

  • 1:46 AirVis Studio lands on Windows

  • 2:02 Movie scenes rebuilt as splats

  • 2:34 Single images to splats in TouchDesigner

  • 2:40 Emory publishes splat subtitles, MIT licensed

  • 2:57 Mapping the Grand Central subway with VPS

  • 3:21 God’s Eye View hits #1 on GitHub

  • 3:36 The Inception navigation clip

  • 3:56 What did you see this week?

  • 4:08 Getting PLYs out of Insta360 Spatial Capture

  • 4:20 4DAnyone gets dramatically cheaper

  • 4:53 Paper of the week: KISS Gaussian Splatting

  • 6:02 NVIDIA, Google and Rockstar are hiring

  • 6:21 Tomorrow: how Sinners used splats

  • 6:36 What tutorials do you actually want?

  • 7:00 Next week

Links from the episode

Episode 1 · August 24, 2026 · 3:34

What Happened in Gaussian Splatting Last Week

The series is back. In three and a half minutes: PlayCanvas opens a SuperSplat publishing API, Nuke 17.1 ships animated splats and relighting, Gaussian splatting comes to Maya, Arrival.Space open-sources an in-browser trainer, NavVis adds splats to IVION, and 4DAnyone reconstructs 4D from a casual monocular video.

Chapters

  • 0:00 The series is back (and looking for a sponsor)

  • 0:24 PlayCanvas opens a SuperSplat publishing API

  • 0:31 Nuke 17.1 ships animated splats and relighting

  • 0:40 Gaussian splatting comes to Maya

  • 0:51 Arrival.Space open sources an in-browser trainer

  • 1:01 SplatPaint keeps shipping in-browser effects

  • 1:09 SHARE PointClouds Studio 2.6

  • 1:20 NavVis adds Gaussian splatting in beta

  • 1:27 A portrait path-traced in Octane

  • 1:40 Why I want to film everything in dynamic 3D

  • 2:03 Wildflow’s coral reef map gets segmentation

  • 2:13 Macro splats of insects and animals

  • 2:19 A playable fighting game built on a Gaussian avatar

  • 2:24 The job board, and who’s hiring

  • 2:42 4DAnyone: 4D from a casual monocular video

  • 3:08 Send me what I missed

Links from the episode