# Flexible Techniques for Differentiable Rendering with 3D Gaussians

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2308.14737 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2308.14737/

## Key facts

- Cited by 28 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 31 of its 76 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 28 Aug 2023.

## Builds on (most cited first, 30 of 31)

- [Adam: A Method for Stochastic Optimization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1412.6980/) (2014)
- [3D Gaussian Splatting for Real-Time Radiance Field Rendering](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2308.04079/) (2023)
- [Instant Neural Graphics Primitives with a Multiresolution Hash Encoding](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2201.05989/) (2022)
- [Plenoxels: Radiance Fields without Neural Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2112.05131/) (2021)
- [Accelerating 3D Deep Learning with PyTorch3D](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2007.08501/) (2020)
- [Neural Scene Flow Fields for Space-Time View Synthesis of Dynamic Scenes](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2011.13084/) (2020)
- [Dynamic 3D Gaussians: Tracking by Persistent Dynamic View Synthesis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2308.09713/) (2023)
- [Common Objects in 3D: Large-Scale Learning and Evaluation of Real-life 3D Category Reconstruction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2109.00512/) (2021)
- [Nerfstudio: A Modular Framework for Neural Radiance Field Development](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2302.04264/) (2023)
- [Modular Primitives for High-Performance Differentiable Rendering](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2011.03277/) (2020)
- [XMem: Long-Term Video Object Segmentation with an Atkinson-Shiffrin Memory Model](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2207.07115/) (2022)
- [Neural 3D Mesh Renderer](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1711.07566/) (2017)
- [Soft Rasterizer: A Differentiable Renderer for Image-based 3D Reasoning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1904.01786/) (2019)
- [MobileNeRF: Exploiting the Polygon Rasterization Pipeline for Efficient Neural Field Rendering on Mobile Architectures](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2208.00277/) (2022)
- [Unifying Flow, Stereo and Depth Estimation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2211.05783/) (2022)
- [Differentiable Surface Splatting for Point-based Geometry Processing](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1906.04173/) (2019)
- [Particle Video Revisited: Tracking Through Occlusions Using Point Trajectories](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2204.04153/) (2022)
- [Thingi10K: A Dataset of 10,000 3D-Printing Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1605.04797/) (2016)
- [LASR: Learning Articulated Shape Reconstruction from a Monocular Video](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2105.02976/) (2021)
- [Unsupervised Learning of Shape and Pose with Differentiable Point Clouds](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1810.09381/) (2018)
- [Subdivision-Based Mesh Convolution Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2106.02285/) (2021)
- [NeRFMeshing: Distilling Neural Radiance Fields into Geometrically-Accurate 3D Meshes](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.09431/) (2023)
- [Approximate Differentiable Rendering with Algebraic Surfaces](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2207.10606/) (2022)
- [Nerflets: Local Radiance Fields for Efficient Structure-Aware 3D Scene Representation from 2D Supervision](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.03361/) (2023)
- [HDR-Plenoxels: Self-Calibrating High Dynamic Range Radiance Fields](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2208.06787/) (2022)
- [PointGMM: a Neural GMM Network for Point Clouds](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2003.13326/) (2020)
- [VMesh: Hybrid Volume-Mesh Representation for Efficient View Synthesis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.16184/) (2023)
- [VoGE: A Differentiable Volume Renderer using Gaussian Ellipsoids for Analysis-by-Synthesis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2205.15401/) (2022)
- [Probabilistic Point Cloud Modeling via Self-Organizing Gaussian Mixture Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2302.00047/) (2023)
- [GMMLoc: Structure Consistent Visual Localization with Gaussian Mixture Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2006.13670/) (2020)

## Built on by (most cited first, 28 of 28)

- [4D Gaussian Splatting for Real-Time Dynamic Scene Rendering](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2310.08528/) (2023)
- [2D Gaussian Splatting for Geometrically Accurate Radiance Fields](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.17888/) (2024)
- [Deformable 3D Gaussians for High-Fidelity Monocular Dynamic Scene Reconstruction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2309.13101/) (2023)
- [LightGaussian: Unbounded 3D Gaussian Compression with 15x Reduction and 200+ FPS](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.17245/) (2023)
- [SplaTAM: Splat, Track & Map 3D Gaussians for Dense RGB-D SLAM](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.02126/) (2023)
- [SC-GS: Sparse-Controlled Gaussian Splatting for Editable Dynamic Scenes](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.14937/) (2023)
- [GS-SLAM: Dense Visual SLAM with 3D Gaussian Splatting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.11700/) (2023)
- [GS-IR: 3D Gaussian Splatting for Inverse Rendering](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.16473/) (2023)
- [MoSca: Dynamic Gaussian Fusion from Casual Videos via 4D Motion Scaffolds](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2405.17421/) (2024)
- [Relightable 3D Gaussians: Realistic Point Cloud Relighting with BRDF Decomposition and Ray Tracing](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.16043/) (2023)
- [3D Gaussian Ray Tracing: Fast Tracing of Particle Scenes](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.07090/) (2024)
- [DN-Splatter: Depth and Normal Priors for Gaussian Splatting and Meshing](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.17822/) (2024)
- [GART: Gaussian Articulated Template Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.16099/) (2023)
- [Dynamic Gaussian Marbles for Novel View Synthesis of Casual Monocular Videos](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.18717/) (2024)
- [Spec-Gaussian: Anisotropic View-Dependent Appearance for 3D Gaussian Splatting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2402.15870/) (2024)
- [GaMeS: Mesh-Based Adapting and Modification of Gaussian Splatting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2402.01459/) (2024)
- [DISTWAR: Fast Differentiable Rendering on Raster-based Rendering Pipelines](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2401.05345/) (2023)
- [Gaussian Splatting with NeRF-based Color and Opacity](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.13729/) (2023)
- [HybridNeRF: Efficient Neural Rendering via Adaptive Volumetric Surfaces](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.03160/) (2023)
- [Neural Directional Encoding for Efficient and Accurate View-Dependent Appearance Modeling](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2405.14847/) (2024)
- [Learning Neural Implicit through Volume Rendering with Attentive Depth Fusion Priors](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2310.11598/) (2023)
- [GlanceVAD: Exploring Glance Supervision for Label-efficient Video Anomaly Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.06154/) (2024)
- [Articulate That Object Part (ATOP): 3D Part Articulation via Text and Motion Personalization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2502.07278/) (2025)
- [PanoSLAM: Panoptic 3D Scene Reconstruction via Gaussian SLAM](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2501.00352/) (2024)
- [Uni-Render: A Unified Accelerator for Real-Time Rendering Across Diverse Neural Renderers](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.23644/) (2025)
- [Alpha Invariance: On Inverse Scaling Between Distance and Volume Density in Neural Radiance Fields](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.02155/) (2024)
- [STAMICS: Splat, Track And Map with Integrated Consistency and Semantics for Dense RGB-D SLAM](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.21425/) (2025)
- [WebSpline: Structure-Informed Splines for Real-Time 3D Gaussians from Monocular Videos](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2606.02096/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Fast, reliable shape reconstruction is an essential ingredient in many computer vision applications. Neural Radiance Fields demonstrated that photorealistic novel view synthesis is within reach, but was gated by performance requirements for fast reconstruction of real scenes and objects. Several recent approaches have built on alternative shape representations, in particular, 3D Gaussians. We develop extensions to these renderers, such as integrating differentiable optical flow, exporting watertight meshes and rendering per-ray normals. Additionally, we show how two of the recent methods are interoperable with each other. These reconstructions are quick, robust, and easily performed on GPU or CPU. For code and visual examples, see https://leonidk.github.io/fmb-plus