[HN Gopher] Gaussian Splatting - A$AP Rocky "Helicopter" music v...
       ___________________________________________________________________
        
       Gaussian Splatting - A$AP Rocky "Helicopter" music video
        
       https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g1-46Nu3HxQ
        
       Author : ChrisArchitect
       Score  : 331 points
       Date   : 2026-01-18 17:40 UTC (5 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (radiancefields.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (radiancefields.com)
        
       | nodra wrote:
       | Never did I think I would ever see anything close to related to
       | A$AP on HN. I love this place.
        
         | keiferski wrote:
         | Hah, for the past day, I've been trying to somehow submit the
         | Helicopter music video / album as a whole to HN. Glad someone
         | figured out the angle was Gaussian.
        
         | stickfigure wrote:
         | Is he wearing... hair curlers?
        
           | nodra wrote:
           | That's what one does when they want some fiyah curls.
        
         | wahnfrieden wrote:
         | And nearly a Carti post at the top of HN
        
           | rw_panic0_0 wrote:
           | I'm taking the opportunity to FWAEH in here
        
           | portly wrote:
           | What do you mean?
        
             | wahnfrieden wrote:
             | Helicopter had a Carti feature that was pulled but leaked,
             | and a promo photoshoot with the two of them for it.
        
         | joshcsimmons wrote:
         | Why is that "cool" or desirable?
        
           | amazingman wrote:
           | Because expertise, love, and care cut across all human
           | endeavor, and noticing those things across domains can be a
           | life affirming kind of shared experience.
        
             | shikshake wrote:
             | Perfect comment, but it's very funny to me that you even
             | needed to say it. Some folks on here talk like moon people
             | who have never met humans before.
        
           | nodra wrote:
           | Desirable because it's a rare culture + tooling combo. I'm
           | into both and HN is one of the few places I would see them
           | come together. So yeah, "cool"
        
         | callbacked wrote:
         | yeah that had me do a double take lol
        
       | daveofiveo wrote:
       | Direct link to the music video:
       | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g1-46Nu3HxQ
        
         | dang wrote:
         | Good idea - we'll put that link in the toptext as well. Thanks!
        
       | roughly wrote:
       | Be sure to watch the video itself* - it's really a great piece of
       | work. The energy is frenetic and it's got this beautiful balance
       | of surrealism from the effects and groundedness from the human
       | performances.
       | 
       | * (Mute it if you don't like the music, just like the rest of us
       | will if you complain about the music)
        
         | filoleg wrote:
         | Similarly, the music video for Taylor Swif[0] (another track by
         | A$AP Rocky) is just as surrealistic and weird in the best way
         | possible, but with an eastern european flavor of it (which is
         | obviously intentional and makes sense, given the filming
         | location and being very on-the-nose with the theme).
         | 
         | 0. https://youtu.be/5URefVYaJrA
        
           | roughly wrote:
           | Holy shit that's great. I need to check a few more of his
           | videos.
        
         | superjan wrote:
         | Watch the video to the very end: the final splat is not a
         | gaussian one.
        
       | yieldcrv wrote:
       | so basically despite the higher resource requirements like 10TB
       | of data for 30 minutes of footage, the compositing is so much
       | faster and more flexible and those resources can be deleted or
       | moved to long term storage in the cloud very quickly and the
       | project can move on
       | 
       | fascinating
       | 
       | I wouldn't have normally read this and watched the video, but my
       | Claude sessions were already executing a plan
       | 
       | the tl;dr is that all the actors were scanned in a 3D point cloud
       | system and then "NeRF"'d which means to extrapolate any missing
       | data about their transposed 3D model
       | 
       | this was then more easily placed into the video than trying to
       | compose and place 2D actors layer by layer
        
         | andybak wrote:
         | > and then "NeRF"'d which means to extrapolate any missing data
         | about their transposed 3D model
         | 
         | Not sure if it's you or the original article but that's a
         | slightly misleading summary of NeRFs.
        
           | yieldcrv wrote:
           | I'm all for the better summary
        
         | darhodester wrote:
         | Gaussian splatting is not NeRF (neural radiance field), but it
         | is a type of radiance field, and supports novel view synthesis.
         | The difference is in an explicit point cloud representation
         | (Gaussian splatting), versus a process that needs to be
         | inferred by a neural network.
        
       | rjh29 wrote:
       | To be honest it looks like it was rendered in an old version of
       | Unreal Engine. That may be an intentional choice - I wonder how
       | realistic guassian splatting can look? Can you redo lights,
       | shadows, remove or move parts of the scene, while preserving the
       | original fidelity and realism?
       | 
       | The way TV/movie production is going (record 100s of hours of
       | footage from multiple angles and edit it all in post) I wonder if
       | this is the end state. Gaussian splatting for the humans and
       | green screens for the rest?
        
         | moi2388 wrote:
         | Yes, they talk about this in the article and that's exactly
         | what they did.
        
           | rjh29 wrote:
           | It wasn't clear to me how much this was intentional vs. being
           | the limits of the technology at the moment.
        
         | darhodester wrote:
         | The aesthetic here is at least partially an intentional choice
         | to lean into the artifacts produced by Gaussian splatting,
         | particularly dynamic (4DGS) splatting. There is temporal
         | inconsistency when capturing performances like this, which are
         | exacerbated by relighting.
         | 
         | That said, the technology is rapidly advancing and this type of
         | volumetric capture is definitely sticking around.
         | 
         | The quality can also be really good, especially for static
         | environments: https://www.linkedin.com/posts/christoph-
         | schindelar-79515351....
        
         | F7F7F7 wrote:
         | Knowing what I know about the artist in this video this was
         | probably more about the novelty of the technology and the
         | creative freedom it offers rather than it is budget.
        
         | TeMPOraL wrote:
         | For me it felt more like higher detail version of Teardown, the
         | voxel-based 3d demolition game. Sure it's splats and not
         | voxels, but the camera and the lighting give this strong voxel
         | game vibe.
        
         | clint wrote:
         | Several of ASAP's video have a lo-fi retro vibe, or specific
         | effects such as simulating stuff like a mpeg a/v corruption,
         | check out A$AP Mob - Yamborghini High
         | (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tt7gP_IW-1w)
        
         | michaelrubloff wrote:
         | We will be able to have imax level 3D technically today if you
         | feed it the correct data
        
       | noman-land wrote:
       | Really amazing video. Unfortunately this article is like 60% over
       | my head. Regardless, I actually love reading jargon-filled
       | statements like this that are totally normal to the initiated but
       | are completely inscrutable to outsiders.                   "That
       | data was then brought into Houdini, where the post production
       | team used CG Nomads GSOPs for manipulation and sequencing, and
       | OTOY's OctaneRender for final rendering. Thanks to this
       | combination, the production team was also able to relight the
       | splats."
        
         | darhodester wrote:
         | Hi, I'm one of the creators of GSOPs for SideFX Houdini.
         | 
         | The gist is that Gaussian splats can replicate reality quite
         | effectively with many 3D ellipsoids (stored as a type of point
         | cloud). Houdini is software that excels at manipulating vast
         | numbers of points, and renderers (such as Octane) can now
         | leverage this type of data to integrate with traditional
         | computer graphics primitives, lights, and techniques.
        
           | suzzer99 wrote:
           | Can you put "Gaussing splats" in some kind of real world
           | metaphor so I can understand what it means? Either that or
           | explain why "Gaussian" and why "splat".
           | 
           | I am vaguely aware of stuff like Gaussian blur on Photoshop.
           | But I never really knew what it does.
        
             | darhodester wrote:
             | Sure!
             | 
             | Gaussian splatting is a bit like photogrammetry. That is,
             | you can record video or take photos of an object or
             | environment from many angles and reproduce it in 3D.
             | Gaussians have the capability to "fade" their opacity based
             | on a Gaussian distribution. This allows them to blend
             | together in a seamless fashion.
             | 
             | The splatting process is achieved by using gradient descent
             | from each camera/image pair to optimize these ellipsoids
             | (Gaussians) such that the reproduce the original inputs as
             | closely as possible. Given enough imagery and sufficient
             | camera alignment, performed using Structure from Motion,
             | you can faithfully reproduce the entire space.
             | 
             | Read more here:
             | https://towardsdatascience.com/a-comprehensive-overview-
             | of-g....
        
             | shwaj wrote:
             | How can you expect someone to tailor a custom explanation,
             | when they don't know your level of mathematical
             | understanding, or even your level of curiosity. You don't
             | know what a Gaussian blur does; do you know what a Gaussian
             | is? How deeply do you want to understand?
             | 
             | If you're curious start with the Wikipedia article and use
             | an LLM to help you understand the parts that don't make
             | sense. Or just ask the LLM to provide a summary at the
             | desired level of detail.
        
               | F7F7F7 wrote:
               | There's a Corridor Digital video being shared that
               | explains it perfectly. With very little math.
               | 
               | https://youtube.com/watch?v=cetf0qTZ04Y
        
             | joshvm wrote:
             | > I am vaguely aware of stuff like Gaussian blur on
             | Photoshop. But I never really knew what it does.
             | 
             | Blurring is a convolution or filter operation. You take a
             | small patch of image (5x5 pixels) and you convolve it with
             | another fixed matrix, called a kernel. Convolution says
             | multiply element-wise and sum. You replace the center pixel
             | with the result.
             | 
             | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Box_blur is the simplest
             | kernel - all ones, and divide by the kernel size. Every
             | pixel becomes the average of itself and its neighbors,
             | which looks blurry. Gaussian blur is calculated in an
             | identical way, but the matrix elements follow the "height"
             | of a 2D Gaussian with some amplitude. It results in a bit
             | more smoothing as farther pixels have less influence.
             | Bigger the kernel, more blurrier the result.There are a lot
             | of these basic operations:
             | 
             | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kernel_(image_processing)
             | 
             | If you see "Gaussian", it implies the distribution is used
             | somewhere in the process, but splatting and image kernels
             | are very different operations.
             | 
             | For what it's worth I don't think the Wikipedia article on
             | Gaussian Blur is particularly accessible.
        
         | pants2 wrote:
         | Corridor has done some great stuff with Gaussian Splats, I
         | recommend this video for a primer!
         | 
         | https://youtube.com/watch?v=cetf0qTZ04Y
        
         | appplication wrote:
         | Reminds me of Kurtwood Smith's piping sales pitch in The
         | Patriot
        
         | michaelrubloff wrote:
         | My bad! I am the author. Gaussian splatting allows you to take
         | a series of normal 2D images or a video and reconstruct very
         | lifelike 3D from it. It's a type of radiance field, like NeRFs
         | or voxel based methods like Plenoxels!
        
       | pleurotus wrote:
       | Super cool to read but can someone eli5 what Gaussian splatting
       | is (and/or radiance fields?) specifically to how the article
       | talks about it finally being "mature enough"? What's changed that
       | this is now possible?
        
         | rkuykendall-com wrote:
         | I found this VFX breakdown of the recent Superman movie to have
         | a great explanation of what it is and what it makes possible:
         | https://youtu.be/eyAVWH61R8E?t=232
         | 
         | tl;dr eli5: Instead of capturing spots of color as they would
         | appear to a camera, they capture spots of color and where they
         | exist in the world. By combining multiple cameras doing this,
         | you can make a 3D works from footage that you can then zoom a
         | virtual camera round.
        
           | michaelrubloff wrote:
           | I also spoke to the vfx team from Superman on how they
           | achieved the reconstructions! (I'm also the author for the
           | Helicopter article here).
           | 
           | https://radiancefields.com/gaussian-splatting-in-superman
        
         | djeastm wrote:
         | For the ELI5, Gaussian splatting represents the scene as
         | millions of tiny, blurry colored blobs in 3D space and renders
         | by quickly "splatting" them onto the screen, making it much
         | faster than computing an image by querying a neural net model
         | like radiance fields.
         | 
         | I'm not up on how things have changed recently
        
         | tel wrote:
         | Gaussian splatting is a way to record 3-dimensional video. You
         | capture a scene from many angles simultaneously and then
         | combine all of those into a single representation. Ideally,
         | that representation is good enough that you can then, post-
         | production, simulate camera angles you didn't originally
         | record.
         | 
         | For example, the camera orbits around the performers in this
         | music video are difficult to imagine in real space. Even if you
         | could pull it off using robotic motion control arms, it would
         | require that the entire choreography is fixed in place before
         | filming. This video clearly takes advantage of being able to
         | direct whatever camera motion the artist wanted in the 3d
         | virtual space of the final composed scene.
         | 
         | To do this, the representation needs to estimate the radiance
         | field, i.e. the amount and color of light visible at every
         | point in your 3d volume, viewed from every angle. It's not
         | possible to do this at high resolution by breaking that space
         | up into voxels, those scale badly, O(n^3). You could attempt to
         | guess at some mesh geometry and paint textures on to it
         | compatible with the camera views, but that's difficult to
         | automate.
         | 
         | Gaussian splatting estimates these radiance fields by assuming
         | that the radiance is build from millions of fuzzy, colored
         | balls positioned, stretched, and rotated in space. These are
         | the Gaussian splats.
         | 
         | Once you have that representation, constructing a novel camera
         | angle is as simple as positioning and angling your virtual
         | camera and then recording the colors and positions of all the
         | splats that are visible.
         | 
         | It turns out that this approach is pretty amenable to
         | techniques similar to modern deep learning. You basically train
         | the positions/shapes/rotations of the splats via gradient
         | descent. It's mostly been explored in research labs but lately
         | production-oriented tools have been built for popular 3d motion
         | graphics tools like Houdini, making it more available.
        
           | cubefox wrote:
           | > Gaussian splatting is a way to record 3-dimensional video.
           | 
           | I would say it's a 3D photo, not a 3D video. But there are
           | already extensions to dynamic scenes with movement.
        
             | poly2it wrote:
             | See 4D splatting.
        
         | dmarcos wrote:
         | It's a point cloud where each point is a semitransparent blob
         | that can have a view dependent color: color changes depending
         | on direction you look at them. Allowing to capture reflections,
         | iridescence...
         | 
         | You generate the point clouds from multiple images of a scene
         | or an object and some machine learning magic
        
         | meindnoch wrote:
         | 1. Create a point cloud from a scene (either via lidar, or via
         | photogrammetry from multiple images)
         | 
         | 2. Replace each point of the point cloud with a fuzzy
         | ellipsoid, that has a bunch of parameters for its position +
         | size + orientation + view-dependent color (via spherical
         | harmonics up to some low order)
         | 
         | 3. If you render these ellipsoids using a differentiable
         | renderer, then you can subtract the resulting image from the
         | ground truth (i.e. your original photos), and calculate the
         | partial derivatives of the error with respect to each of the
         | millions of ellipsoid parameters that you fed into the
         | renderer.
         | 
         | 4. Now you can run gradient descent using the differentiable
         | renderer, which makes your fuzzy ellipsoids converge to
         | something closely reproducing the ground truth images (from
         | multiple angles).
         | 
         | 5. Since the ellipsoids started at the 3D point cloud's
         | positions, the 3D structure of the scene will likely be
         | preserved during gradient descent, thus the resulting scene
         | will support novel camera angles with plausible-looking
         | results.
        
           | klondike_klive wrote:
           | You... you must have been quite some 5 year old.
        
             | SchemaLoad wrote:
             | Some things would be literally impossible to properly
             | explain to a 5 year old.
        
           | perfmode wrote:
           | math is magic wow
        
         | krackers wrote:
         | https://aras-p.info/blog/2023/09/05/Gaussian-Splatting-is-pr...
         | and for a visual demo of the result
         | https://antimatter15.com/splat/
        
       | londons_explore wrote:
       | Pretty sure most of this could be filmed with a camera drone and
       | preprogrammed flight path...
       | 
       | Did the Gaussian splatting actually make it any cheaper?
       | Especially considering that it needed 50+ fixed camera angles to
       | splat properly, and extensive post-processing work both
       | computationally and human labour, a camera drone just seems
       | easier.
        
         | echelon wrote:
         | It's fucking cool. That's why.
         | 
         | This tech is moving along at breakneck pace and now we're all
         | talking about it. A drone video wouldn't have done that.
        
         | ThouYS wrote:
         | it gives you flexibility, options
        
         | larsmaxfield wrote:
         | Flying a camera drone with such proximity and acceleration
         | would be a safety nightmare.
        
         | nebezb wrote:
         | If it was achievable, cheaper, and of equal quality then it
         | would have been done that way. Surely it would've been done
         | that way a long time ago too. Drone paths have been around a
         | lot longer than this technology.
         | 
         | There's no proof of your claim and this video is proof of the
         | opposite.
        
         | ex-aws-dude wrote:
         | I think you're missing the point
         | 
         | Volumetric capture like this allows you to decide on the camera
         | angles in post-production
        
         | darhodester wrote:
         | A drone path would not allow for such seamless transitions,
         | never mind the planning required to nail all that choreography,
         | effects, etc.
         | 
         | This approach is 100% flexible, and I'm sure at least part of
         | the magic came from the process of play and experimentation in
         | post.
        
         | hamburglar wrote:
         | > Pretty sure most of this could be filmed with a camera drone
         | and preprogrammed flight path
         | 
         | This is a "Dropbox is just ftp and rsync" level comment.
         | There's a shot in there where Rocky is sitting on top of the
         | spinning blades of a helicopter and the camera smoothly
         | transitions from flying around the room to solidly rotating
         | along with the blades, so it's fixed relative to rocky. Not
         | only would programming a camera drone to follow this path be
         | extremely difficult (and wouldn't look as good), but just
         | setting up the stunt would be cost prohibitive.
         | 
         | This is just one example of the hundreds you could come up
         | with.
        
           | mlyle wrote:
           | Drones and 2d compositing could do a lot. They would excel in
           | some areas used in the video, require far more resources than
           | this technique in others, and be completely infeasible on a
           | few.
           | 
           | They would look much better in a very "familiar" way. They
           | would have much less of the glitch and dynamic aesthetic that
           | makes this so novel.
        
         | F7F7F7 wrote:
         | This might be the first time I'm stumbling on Dunning Kruger on
         | HN, no offense.
        
       | drdirk wrote:
       | Can somebody explain to me what was actually scanned? Only the
       | actors doing movements like push ups, or whole scenes / rooms?
        
       | MuffinFlavored wrote:
       | How did Rhianna look him in the eyes and say "yes babe, good
       | album, release it, this is what the people wanted after 7 years,
       | it is pleasing to listen to and enjoyable"?
        
         | larsmaxfield wrote:
         | I prefer when artists make music they intrinsically want to
         | make -- not what others want them to make.
        
           | b00ty4breakfast wrote:
           | the real question is how much of the art is their own and how
           | much is outside expectations and their reactions to it.
           | 
           | And it's not always giving in to those voices, sometimes it's
           | going in the opposite direction specifically to subvert those
           | voices and expectations even if that ends up going against
           | your initial instincts as an artist.
           | 
           | With someone like A$AP Rocky, there is a lot of money on the
           | line wrt the record execs but even small indie artists
           | playing to only a hundred people a night have to contend with
           | audience expectation and how that can exert an influence on
           | their creativity.
        
         | perfmode wrote:
         | It seems the numerous leaks and trials took their toll.
         | 
         | I don't disagree with you--I felt "Tailor Swif," "DMB," and
         | "Both Eyes Closed" were all stronger than the tracks that made
         | it onto this album.
         | 
         | But sometimes you've gotta ship the project in the state it's
         | in and move on with your life.
         | 
         | Maybe now he can move forward and start working on something
         | new. And perhaps that project will be stronger.
        
         | weakfish wrote:
         | Because it was awesome. But also, leaks probably.
        
         | delbronski wrote:
         | Im sure it was more like, "hey babe, can I get a few millions
         | to go in the studio and experiment/make some art?" And then she
         | was like, "yeah go for it! Make some weird shit."
         | 
         | If I was in his position I'd probably be doing the same. Why
         | bother with another top hit that pleases the masses.
        
       | sneak wrote:
       | > _One recurring reaction to the video has been confusion.
       | Viewers assume the imagery is AI-generated. According to
       | Evercoast, that couldn't be further from the truth. Every stunt,
       | every swing, every fall was physically performed and captured in
       | real space. What makes it feel synthetic is the freedom
       | volumetric capture affords._
       | 
       | No, it's simply the framerate.
        
       | moribvndvs wrote:
       | In another setting, it looks like ass, but lo-fi, glitchy shit is
       | perfectly compatible with hip-hop aesthetic. Good track though.
        
         | henshao wrote:
         | I think in 2026 it's hard to make a video look this "bad"
         | without it being a clear aesthetic choice, so not sure you
         | could find this video in another setting.
        
         | ungreased0675 wrote:
         | The technology is impressive, but the end result... Weapons-
         | grade brainrot.
         | 
         | I'm curious what other artists end up making with it.
        
           | F7F7F7 wrote:
           | The article said it was by design...
        
       | darhodester wrote:
       | Hi,
       | 
       | I'm David Rhodes, Co-founder of CG Nomads, developer of GSOPs
       | (Gaussian Splatting Operators) for SideFX Houdini. GSOPs was used
       | in combination with OTOY OctaneRender to produce this music
       | video.
       | 
       | If you're interested in the technology and its capabilities,
       | learn more at https://www.cgnomads.com/ or AMA.
       | 
       | Try GSOPs yourself: https://github.com/cgnomads/GSOPs (example
       | content included).
        
         | sbierwagen wrote:
         | From the article:
         | 
         | >Evercoast deployed a 56 camera RGB-D array
         | 
         | Do you know which depth cameras they used?
        
           | brcmthrowaway wrote:
           | Kinect Azure
        
           | darhodester wrote:
           | I was not involved in the capture process with Evercoast, but
           | I may have heard somewhere they used RealSense cameras.
           | 
           | I recommend asking https://www.linkedin.com/in/benschwartzxr/
           | for accuracy.
        
           | darhodester wrote:
           | Aha: https://www.red.com/stories/evercoast-komodo-rig
           | 
           | So likely RealSense D455.
        
           | secretsatan wrote:
           | Couldn't you just use iphone pros for this? I developed an
           | app specifically for photogrammetry capture using AR and the
           | depth sensor as it seemed like a cheap alternative.
           | 
           | EDIT: I realize a phone is not on the same level as a red
           | camera, but i just saw iphones as a massively cheaper option
           | to alternatives in the field i worked in.
        
             | F7F7F7 wrote:
             | ASAP Rocky has a fervent fanbase who's been anticipating
             | this album. So I'm assuming that whatever record label he's
             | signed to gave him the budget.
             | 
             | And when I think back to another iconic hip hop (iconic
             | that genre) video where they used practical effects and
             | military helicopters chasing speedboats in the waters off
             | of Santa Monica...I bet they had change to spear.
        
             | fastasucan wrote:
             | Why would they go for the cheapest option?
        
               | secretsatan wrote:
               | It was more the point that technology is much cheaper.
               | The company i worked for had completely missed it while
               | trying to develop in house solutions.
        
             | darhodester wrote:
             | I think it's because they already had proven capture
             | hardware, harvest, and processing workflows.
             | 
             | But yes, you can easily use iPhones for this now.
        
               | secretsatan wrote:
               | Looks great by the way, i was wondering if there's a file
               | format for volumetric video captures
        
             | numpad0 wrote:
             | A single camera only captures the side of the object facing
             | the camera. Knowing how far away that camera facing side of
             | a Rubik's Cube help if you were making educated
             | guesses(novel view synthesis), but it won't _solve_ the
             | problem of actually photographing the backside.
             | 
             | There are usually six sides on a cube, which means you need
             | minimum six iPhone around an object to capture all sides of
             | it to be able to then freely move around it. You might as
             | well seek open-source alternatives than relying on Apple
             | surprise boxes for that.
             | 
             | In cases where your subject would be static, such as it
             | being a building, then you can wave around a single iPhone
             | for the same effect for a result comparable to more
             | expensive rigs, of course.
        
           | bininunez wrote:
           | We (Evercoast) used 56 RealSense D455s. Our software can run
           | with any camera input, from depth cameras to machine vision
           | to cinema REDs. But for this, RealSense did the job. The
           | higher end the camera, the more expensive and time consuming
           | everything is. We have a cloud platform to scale rendering,
           | but it's still overall more costly (time and money) to use
           | high res. We've worked hard to make even low res data look
           | awesome. And if you look at the aesthetic of the video (90s
           | MTV), we didn't need 4K/6K/8K renders.
        
         | moralestapia wrote:
         | Random question, since I see your username is green.
         | 
         | How did you find out this was posted here?
         | 
         | Also, great work!
        
           | darhodester wrote:
           | My friend and colleague shared a link with me. Pretty cool to
           | see this trending here. I'm very passionate about Gaussian
           | splatting and developing tools for creatives.
           | 
           | And thank you!
        
         | dostick wrote:
         | Can such plugin be possible for Davinci Resolve, to have merge
         | of scene captured from two iPhones with spatial data, into 3D
         | scene? With M4 that shouldn't be problem?
        
           | darhodester wrote:
           | Yes: https://irrealix.com/plugin/gaussian-splatting-davinci-
           | resol...
           | 
           | (I'm not the author.)
           | 
           | You can train your own splats using Brush or OpenSplat
        
         | jeffgreco wrote:
         | Great work! I'd love to see a proper BTS or case study.
        
           | darhodester wrote:
           | I do believe a BTS is being developed.
        
         | henjodottech wrote:
         | I'm fascinated by the aesthetic of this technique. I remember
         | early versions that were completely glitched out and presented
         | 3d clouds of noise and fragments to traverse through. I'm
         | curious if you have any thoughts about creatively 'abusing'
         | this tech? Perhaps misaligning things somehow or using some
         | wrong inputs.
        
       | narrator wrote:
       | This reminds me about how Soulja Boy just used a cracked copy of
       | Fruity Loops and a cheap microphone and recorded all his songs
       | that made him millions.[1] Edit: Ok this was a big team of VFX
       | producers who did this. Still, prices are coming down
       | dramatically in general, but yeah that idea is a bit of an
       | underfit to this case.
       | 
       | [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f1rjhVe59ek
        
         | comradesmith wrote:
         | I really don't see the connection. A$AP isn't a noob
        
         | enneff wrote:
         | You might consider why this article which has nothing to do
         | with AI as you know it (except for the machine learning aspects
         | of Gaussian splatting), and was produced by a huge team of vfx
         | professionals, has made you think about AI democratising
         | culture (despite the fact that music videos and films have been
         | cheap to make for decades). Don't just look for opportunities
         | to discuss your favourite talking points.
        
           | narrator wrote:
           | Fair point actually. touche.
        
       | jtolmar wrote:
       | Dang, it's been cool watching gaussian splats go from tech demo
       | to real workflow.
        
         | darhodester wrote:
         | For sure!
        
       | weinzierl wrote:
       | _" The team also used Blender heavily for layout and previs,
       | converting splat sequences into lightweight proxy caches for
       | scene planning."_
        
       | badcryptobitch wrote:
       | Both of my worlds are colliding with this article. I love reading
       | about how deeply technical products/artifacts get used in art.
        
       | KevinMS wrote:
       | aren't music videos supposed to have music?
        
         | hahahahhaah wrote:
         | it does, it just doesn't have video
        
       | lawgimenez wrote:
       | A$AP Rocky's music videos has been always great.
        
       | diffuse_l wrote:
       | Too bad, but I managed to watch about 30 seconds of the video
       | before getting motion sickness.
       | 
       | Seems like a really cool technology, though.
       | 
       | I wonder if anyone else got the same response, or it's just me.
        
         | lwhi wrote:
         | I loved the video. Didn't get the motion sickness myself.
        
         | darhodester wrote:
         | My wife said the same thing, but it gets better after the
         | intro.
        
       | squidsoup wrote:
       | Tangential, but I've been exploring gaussian splatting as a
       | photographic/artistic medium for a while, and love the
       | expressionistic quality of the model output when deprived of
       | data.
       | 
       | https://bayardrandel.com/gaussographs/
        
         | darhodester wrote:
         | Cool aesthetic!
        
         | kroaton wrote:
         | Loving this; great work! Do you talk about the process anywhere
         | in more depth?
        
           | squidsoup wrote:
           | Thanks! I'm using the KIRI Engine in Blender to render splats
           | from my photos (https://github.com/Kiri-Innovation/3dgs-
           | render-blender-addon) and then process the image as I would
           | my photography in Lightroom. There are lots of different
           | photogrammetry tools for generating plys (the point cloud)
           | like PolyCam (https://poly.cam).
        
       | Footprint0521 wrote:
       | They really said it's capturing everything when A$AP Rocky's
       | Gaussian splatted mouth in that video be looking worse than AI
       | generated video lol
        
       | periodjet wrote:
       | The end result is really interesting. As others have pointed out,
       | it looks sort of like it was rendered by an early 2000s game
       | engine. There's a cohesiveness to the art direction that you just
       | can't get from green screens and the like. In service of some of
       | the worst music made by human brains, but still really cool tech.
        
       ___________________________________________________________________
       (page generated 2026-01-18 23:00 UTC)