[HN Gopher] Show HN: SuperSplat - open-source 3D Gaussian Splat ...
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       Show HN: SuperSplat - open-source 3D Gaussian Splat Editor
        
       Author : ovenchips
       Score  : 175 points
       Date   : 2024-11-06 12:07 UTC (10 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (playcanvas.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (playcanvas.com)
        
       | Retr0id wrote:
       | It would be interesting to have a 3d version of a mesh warp /
       | puppet warp
        
       | HexDecOctBin wrote:
       | Is there a reading guide to the maths behind Gaussian splats? All
       | the resources I could find either assumed lots of knowledge
       | (including what a "3D Gaussian" even is), or were written for
       | complete lay-person (and probably includes some AI grift).
        
         | dheera wrote:
         | I wish all these guides used better notation. They all use the
         | scariest possible Greek symbols (pi epsilon feta etc) that are
         | hard to make sense of without a degree in anthropology, instead
         | of nicely named variables like programmers use.
        
           | akx wrote:
           | I do hope they don't use brined white cheese as a symbol.
        
             | Sardtok wrote:
             | Oh, they do. They most definitely do. And salads. [?]= Feta
             | hasn't made into Unicode yet, so I'm substituting it for
             | generic cheese, but just you wait.
        
         | speps wrote:
         | The blog posts from Aras are a really good starting point:
         | https://aras-p.info/blog/2023/09/05/Gaussian-Splatting-is-pr...
        
         | yokto wrote:
         | Not a reading guide, but Computerphile have a good introductory
         | video on Gaussian Splats:
         | https://youtu.be/VkIJbpdTujE?si=8hoMbMx6tKuMZo2S
         | 
         | Individualkex also has a couple videos on the high level ideas:
         | https://youtu.be/GQXDjzNWuPc?si=zlAN7dO9STGATKad
        
       | infocollector wrote:
       | Impressive! Does anyone know if this is open source? Or perhaps
       | can be run locally as a server?
        
         | salviati wrote:
         | I found its repository after searching google. The license is
         | MIT.
         | 
         | [1] https://github.com/playcanvas/supersplat
         | 
         | I remember a time when it was considered unpolite to ask a
         | question without googling first. Is it still the case?
        
           | criddell wrote:
           | As I recall it, the asshole move was to reply to a question
           | with a LMGTFY link.
        
             | TeMPOraL wrote:
             | Those were the times when you could actually rely on Google
             | to give you the right results for such a query near the
             | top, and more importantly, give you the same results it
             | would give to the person you're telling to Google it.
        
               | viraptor wrote:
               | Kagi allows you to share a URL to a specific search
               | results page. Maybe it's time to revive the idea...
        
           | yapyap wrote:
           | > I remember a time when it was considered unpolite to ask a
           | question without googling first. Is it still the case?
           | 
           | Yes
        
         | jonasdoesthings wrote:
         | Not sure if I'm missing something, but the submission title
         | says "open-source" and in the tool's help menu there's a link
         | to the repo (https://github.com/playcanvas/supersplat), the
         | tool runs in your browser, there's no server involved besides a
         | Web-Server hosting the files.
        
       | joch wrote:
       | There's an app for Quest 3 called Gracia, which allows you to see
       | these in 3D space:
       | 
       | - https://www.meta.com/en-gb/experiences/gracia/25784099001234...
       | 
       | - https://www.gracia.ai
        
         | creativenolo wrote:
         | Whats the performance like?
        
           | joch wrote:
           | Performance is surprisingly great, but of course it's not as
           | sharp/high res as you would get on a PC.
        
       | misterdata wrote:
       | This is cool!
       | 
       | Any tips for an app to use on iOS to capture the necessary .ply
       | data?
       | 
       | Scaniverse is a great app by Niantic that can do this on-device,
       | but it isn't very customizable and can't export its raw scanning
       | data (exported .plys do not have the data this editor requires).
        
         | bhouston wrote:
         | PolyCam I think is the most popular?
        
       | bhouston wrote:
       | This is neat but Splats are not really mean to be edited in this
       | way.
       | 
       | Splats are sort of like byte code, they are the compiled and
       | optimized representation of reflected light as semi-transparent
       | guassians.
       | 
       | Or you can think of them as the PDF equivalent of a Google or
       | Word Doc. All the logic is gone, and you just have final
       | optimized results.
       | 
       | Generally when you edit PDFs, the results are not great and you
       | cannot make major edits because the layout won't reflow, etc.
       | 
       | So while this is cool, I don't think it will take off unless
       | there is another innovation in terms of either using AI to
       | "reflow" the lighting and surfaces after an edit, or inferring
       | more directly the underlying representations (true surface
       | properties and the light sources.)
        
         | yorwba wrote:
         | There are already approaches to infer bidirectional reflectance
         | distribution functions (BRDFs, the "true surface properties")
         | and lights:
         | https://nju-3dv.github.io/projects/Relightable3DGaussian/
        
         | slimbuck wrote:
         | I'm not really sure what you mean. Think of SuperSplat as the
         | photoshop of gaussian splats?
         | 
         | - SuperSplat dev :)
        
         | caycecan wrote:
         | Relightable gaussian splats - https://junxuan-
         | li.github.io/urgca-website/
        
         | ovenchips wrote:
         | Hi Ben! I would argue that it is very useful for splats to be
         | edited in this way. I couldn't have built this application
         | without SuperSplat for isolating, cleaning, transforming and
         | optimizing/compressing the PLY:
         | 
         | https://playcanv.as/e/p/cLkf99ZV/
         | 
         | Integrating AI is an interesting topic and something that
         | certainly has potential.
        
           | bhouston wrote:
           | I 100% agree with:
           | 
           | - cleaning up noisy GuassianSplats is useful. There are often
           | stragglers floating around in space that need to get deleted.
           | 
           | - compression/optimizing them is useful.
           | 
           | This being a cleanup and compression tool makes sense, but I
           | guess I don't call that an "editor."
           | 
           | I guess I was more arguing against the idea that this is a
           | viable "editor" where one can combine and manipulate in more
           | radical ways Gaussian Splats. The current technological
           | approach doesn't make this a feasible use case.
        
             | ovenchips wrote:
             | Coming very soon is:
             | 
             | - Copy & Paste: e.g. delete a tree and fill the hole with a
             | copied patch of grass
             | 
             | - Color Adjustments: tinting, brightness, etc.
             | 
             | If these aren't editing ops, I don't know what is. :) Sure,
             | you _could_ go back and recapture photogrammetry or rerun
             | training, but that's super costly in terms of time.
             | SuperSplat lets you make simple edits quickly and easily.
        
               | jobigoud wrote:
               | In theory if you delete something you have to recompute
               | global illumination and remove cast shadows in the
               | immediate environment of the removed object, but that
               | information is baked in the gaussian splats. I think
               | that's the kind of limitation the parent comment is
               | talking about.
        
               | ovenchips wrote:
               | To be as accurate as possible, yes, you need to consider
               | lighting/shadows. But trust me, in many circumstances,
               | you can copy+paste gaussians and it looks 'good enough'.
               | It depends on the scene and the edit you want to make.
        
           | rsp1984 wrote:
           | Wow, the fade-in animation is most excellent! Mind sharing
           | how you created it?
        
         | yapyap wrote:
         | great metaphor, thanks!
        
           | pixelpoet wrote:
           | Seems like 54 day old spam account from post history? A bit
           | difficult to tell.
        
         | kfarr wrote:
         | I guess in theory what you say could be correct, however in
         | practice this tool has been very helpful for client work of
         | editing, cleaning, cropping and even slight modification of
         | Gaussian splats. I could see a similar argument for raster
         | images in general -- they are hard to edit as you're modifying
         | individual pixels and it's not efficient, but we've seen tools
         | grow from MS Paint to modern Photoshop to become very useful. I
         | think the same could be said here -- it's just early and we're
         | at the "bytecode" level as you say.
        
         | bufferoverflow wrote:
         | That's a ridiculous take. Generated splats almost always have
         | garbage parts that need to be truncated. An editor is
         | absolutely needed for that.
        
         | trebligdivad wrote:
         | I found it interesting, I'd heard of guassian splats but not
         | really appreciated how they worked, but this let me play with a
         | model; so I'm not saying necessarily useful but instructive.
        
         | neomantra wrote:
         | I don't like the "byte code" analogy for Gaussian splats. If
         | they were like that, then we could apply compiler optimization
         | and those sorts of math techniques to them. But they are
         | Probability Distribution Functions with transforms, so the math
         | tools we have to work with them are the similar to those in
         | signal processing -- resampling, quantizing, estimating, etc.
         | 
         | In that model, we don't compile them, we train them; we don't
         | run them, we sample/rasterize them.
         | 
         | This link came up on HN before and was a great
         | refresher/expander on the math of Guassians which allow all
         | this. [1].
         | 
         | Since Gaussians can be estimated, neural networks can
         | model/generate them. Researchers are using this for 4D work and
         | mesh extraction. The NNs run at lower frame rate informing the
         | 3DGS running at interactive rates.
         | 
         | You are right that it is ephemeral and really a weird trick of
         | the eye and we need new ways to edit/create it. Vectors/pixels
         | have had a lot more time to grow tooling. People are working on
         | it, just the toolbox is different. Very cool stuff will be
         | coming up, I bet!
         | 
         | [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41912160 I've also re-
         | learned Fourier transforms to appreciate similar concepts.
        
         | jtolmar wrote:
         | I don't really think this is true. Gaussian splats certainly
         | came from a context where an opaque representation is expected
         | and normal, but they ended up being an entirely comprehensible
         | format. They're not as simple to operate on as an SDF or voxel
         | representation, but I think they're on par with triangle mesh
         | geometry. A transformed fuzzy sphere is about as complex as a
         | triangle, and spherical harmonic colors, while more
         | conceptually difficult than textures, have fewer moving parts.
        
       | amegahed wrote:
       | I could imagine this as a clean-up tool for splats. In any case,
       | beautiful interface and the sample model made me smile. Thanks
       | for sharing.
        
       | antoineMoPa wrote:
       | Did anyone build a text-to-splat 3D generation model? Seems like
       | it would be pretty straightforward? Should make it really easy to
       | generate assets for video games.
       | 
       | EDIT: yep - https://gsgen3d.github.io/
        
         | viraptor wrote:
         | Aren't gaussian splats incompatible with most common game
         | development styles? No shadows, no rigging/animation as main
         | issues - or maybe I'm misunderstanding / behind on the research
         | - please correct me.
        
       | hasnain99 wrote:
       | that awesome whats most programing language used
        
       | hasnain99 wrote:
       | is there have repo on git have please provide a link
        
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       (page generated 2024-11-06 23:00 UTC)