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Gaussian splats

How to bring a captured location into the comp — and relight it.

SplatRead

Reads a gaussian-splat capture (.ply in the 3DGS layout, .splat, or .spz) into the scene: a captured location as millions of soft elliptical blobs, with parallax and view-dependent colour. Loads off-thread — the box draws dim while streaming, then the splats render in the viewport and Render3D, sorted and alpha-blended, depth-composited against cards and geometry. `color_space` declares what the trainer baked (sRGB is usual; a washed-out or crunchy capture is almost always this knob). `budget` caps drawn splats by importance and SAYS so in the HUD. `cluster_tolerance` sets the spatial cluster size used for crypto ids, groups and normal smoothing (0 = automatic). RELIGHT (§4): `relight`=lights turns on the dynamic Light3D loop — `ambient` dims the capture-day lighting baked into the splats and the scene's lights add your own key/fill/rim on top (`light_gain` scales them, `exposure` in stops scales the whole). This is relighting a captured location, which no other compositor does. CLEANUP (§5.4): floater_removal drops the debris clouds every capture has (a statistical outlier pass — the raw scene bounds are usually dominated by them); opacity_floor culls near-transparent splats.

SplatFx

Directs a gaussian-splat capture with a FIELD over its splats (spec §5) — the difference between a viewer and comp. crop: keep or carve a box/sphere region, feathered into a soft opacity falloff (splats feather beautifully). dissolve: fade opacity by a noise/distance/axis field, optionally shrinking splats to nothing (the assemble-the-hologram look). warp: push splats along a field — swirl, drift, wind. shade: tint + gamma the base colour. matte: project a 2D matte (a Roto, a Crucible key, any branch) through a camera and dissolve the splats it covers — the cross-system trick nothing else can do. Dissolve/warp/shade take an optional REGION (box/sphere) so the effect hits one object, not the whole scene. Chain several; each appends to the set. Cleanup (floater removal, opacity floor) lives on the SplatRead node.

Getting started

  1. SplatRead takes a .ply in the 3DGS layout, .splat or .spz. It loads off-thread: the box draws dim while streaming, then the splats appear.
  2. Check color_space first. A washed-out or crunchy capture is almost always this knob, not the capture.
  3. Set budget for interactivity — it caps drawn splats by importance and says so in the HUD.
  4. Direct it with SplatFx: crop, dissolve, warp, shade, or matte through a camera.

Relighting a capture

relight = lights turns on the dynamic light loop: ambient dims the lighting baked in on the capture day, and the scene's Light3Ds add your own key, fill and rim on top. This is relighting a captured location — no other compositor does it.

Known edges