Gaussian Splatting’s barriers continue to fall as creating ready to train datasets from existing Unity Projects just became significantly easier through UnityGaussianCapture. 

The plugin offers two main modes for data capture: Dome Capture and Volume Capture. Dome Capture is ideal for focusing around a single object. It orbits the subject in a spherical orientation, ring by ring, view by view, based on configurable parameters. You can adjust the number of rings, the number of views per ring, the orbit radius, and even the vertical offset to suit your scene. A nice feature is you can see the camera’s position in the 3D space, making it much easier to decide how many rings you might need.

Volume Capture, on the other hand, is geared toward more complex scenes. It lets you define a bounding box in 3D space and populates that volume with camera positions on a structured grid. You’re in control of the size, center point, and subdivisions, and there’s even a toggle to preview the grid live in the editor. This is particularly handy for more architectural or environmental scenes.

Both of these modes allow for export of SfM data that would be ready to drop into local training platforms like Postshot or Nerfstudio. That means you can capture your scene and go straight to training without having to run your dataset through COLMAP.

Installation is lightweight. Clone the GitHub repo, drag the relevant files into your Unity project, and you’re ready to go. Once set up, just attach the CameraDomeGizmo component to an empty GameObject, open the capture window, and start generating your views.

While the tool is designed with Unity 6 in mind, it may work with earlier versions as well. The current roadmap includes plans to support animation capture, opening the door for future 4D Gaussian Splatting training from moving Unity scenes.

UnityGaussianCapture is also open sourced and MIT Licensed, meaning that you can use the tool commercially, in addition to building on top of it. We have seen apps that introduce these functionalities in Blender, like Splatman and Olli Huttunen’s camera tool, but this is the first one to make it easy in Unity I have seen.