We’ve been writing a lot about Gaussian splatting recently. This high-fidelity alternative to photometry is a relatively new technique for turning 2D photos or video into 3D scenes. Adobe‘s free new app Substance 3D Viewer supports it, and we’ve seen some impressive results for 3D visualisations in Unreal Engine 5 (also see our V-Ray 7 review).

Gaussian splatting can be used to capture accurate lighting and reflections as well as geometry. Now researchers have just described a new tech could mean you don’t even need to capture the images or video for gaussian splats yourself. ActiveSplat is an autonomous tool that walks its way around an indoor space and produces a realistic and accurate 3D representation with incredible efficiency.