mlsanityData to 14 Oct 2026

SuGaR: Surface-Aligned Gaussian Splatting for Efficient 3D Mesh Reconstruction and High-Quality Mesh Rendering

arXiv 2311.12775 ↗First posted 21 Nov 2023cs.GR cs.CVcited by 616

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Abstract (arXiv)

We propose a method to allow precise and extremely fast mesh extraction from 3D Gaussian Splatting. Gaussian Splatting has recently become very popular as it yields realistic rendering while being significantly faster to train than NeRFs. It is however challenging to extract a mesh from the millions of tiny 3D gaussians as these gaussians tend to be unorganized after optimization and no method has been proposed so far. Our first key contribution is a regularization term that encourages the gaussians to align well with the surface of the scene. We then introduce a method that exploits this alignment to extract a mesh from the Gaussians using Poisson reconstruction, which is fast, scalable, and preserves details, in contrast to the Marching Cubes algorithm usually applied to extract meshes from Neural SDFs. Finally, we introduce an optional refinement strategy that binds gaussians to the surface of the mesh, and jointly optimizes these Gaussians and the mesh through Gaussian splatting rendering. This enables easy editing, sculpting, rigging, animating, compositing and relighting of the Gaussians using traditional softwares by manipulating the mesh instead of the gaussians themselves. Retrieving such an editable mesh for realistic rendering is done within minutes with our method, compared to hours with the state-of-the-art methods on neural SDFs, while providing a better rendering quality. Our project page is the following: https://anttwo.github.io/sugar/

Key facts. Cited by 616 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026). Builds on 31 of its 47 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 21 Nov 2023.

Builds on

31 of 47 references.

References · 31

  1. 2019PyTorch: An Imperative Style, High-Performance Deep Learning Librarycited by 20,305
  2. 2018The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Deep Features as a Perceptual Metriccited by 11,177
  3. 20233D Gaussian Splatting for Real-Time Radiance Field Renderingcited by 6,226
  4. 2022Instant Neural Graphics Primitives with a Multiresolution Hash Encodingcited by 3,723
  5. 2021Mip-NeRF 360: Unbounded Anti-Aliased Neural Radiance Fieldscited by 2,032
  6. 2021Mip-NeRF: A Multiscale Representation for Anti-Aliasing Neural Radiance Fieldscited by 1,964
  7. 2021NeuS: Learning Neural Implicit Surfaces by Volume Rendering for Multi-view Reconstructioncited by 1,712
  8. 2021Plenoxels: Radiance Fields without Neural Networkscited by 1,613
  9. 2022TensoRF: Tensorial Radiance Fieldscited by 1,280
  10. 2021Volume Rendering of Neural Implicit Surfacescited by 996
  11. 2021Direct Voxel Grid Optimization: Super-fast Convergence for Radiance Fields Reconstructioncited by 964
  12. 2021PlenOctrees for Real-time Rendering of Neural Radiance Fieldscited by 905
19 more
  1. 2020Accelerating 3D Deep Learning with PyTorch3Dcited by 784
  2. 2021KiloNeRF: Speeding up Neural Radiance Fields with Thousands of Tiny MLPscited by 673
  3. 2021UNISURF: Unifying Neural Implicit Surfaces and Radiance Fields for Multi-View Reconstructioncited by 646
  4. 2021Ref-NeRF: Structured View-Dependent Appearance for Neural Radiance Fieldscited by 575
  5. 2020NeRV: Neural Reflectance and Visibility Fields for Relighting and View Synthesiscited by 496
  6. 2021Baking Neural Radiance Fields for Real-Time View Synthesiscited by 468
  7. 2023Neuralangelo: High-Fidelity Neural Surface Reconstructioncited by 467
  8. 2020NeRD: Neural Reflectance Decomposition from Image Collectionscited by 449
  9. 2021PhySG: Inverse Rendering with Spherical Gaussians for Physics-based Material Editing and Relightingcited by 335
  10. 2022MobileNeRF: Exploiting the Polygon Rasterization Pipeline for Efficient Neural Field Rendering on Mobile Architecturescited by 311
  11. 2020Free View Synthesiscited by 231
  12. 2023BakedSDF: Meshing Neural SDFs for Real-Time View Synthesiscited by 221
  13. 2021Point-Based Neural Rendering with Per-View Optimizationcited by 190
  14. 2020Stable View Synthesiscited by 165
  15. 2022NeuMesh: Learning Disentangled Neural Mesh-based Implicit Field for Geometry and Texture Editingcited by 142
  16. 2021Improving neural implicit surfaces geometry with patch warpingcited by 137
  17. 2022ReLU Fields: The Little Non-linearity That Couldcited by 87
  18. 2023NeRFMeshing: Distilling Neural Radiance Fields into Geometrically-Accurate 3D Meshescited by 53
  19. 2022NeROIC: Neural Rendering of Objects from Online Image Collectionscited by 36

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Cited by year (2026 to 14 Oct)

Citing papers per year: 2023: 2; 2024: 224; 2025: 226; 2026: 164.

616 papers.

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  1. 20242D Gaussian Splatting for Geometrically Accurate Radiance Fieldscited by 1,076
  2. 2025Depth Anything 3: Recovering the Visual Space from Any Viewscited by 692
  3. 2024Evaluating Real-World Robot Manipulation Policies in Simulationcited by 495
  4. 2024PGSR: Planar-based Gaussian Splatting for Efficient and High-Fidelity Surface Reconstructioncited by 285
  5. 2024Gaussian Opacity Fields: Efficient Adaptive Surface Reconstruction in Unbounded Scenescited by 232
  6. 2024A Survey on 3D Gaussian Splattingcited by 224
  7. 20244D-Rotor Gaussian Splatting: Towards Efficient Novel View Synthesis for Dynamic Scenescited by 189
  8. 2024High-quality Surface Reconstruction using Gaussian Surfelscited by 161
  9. 2023Relightable 3D Gaussians: Realistic Point Cloud Relighting with BRDF Decomposition and Ray Tracingcited by 142
  10. 20243D Gaussian Ray Tracing: Fast Tracing of Particle Scenescited by 139
  11. 2024DN-Splatter: Depth and Normal Priors for Gaussian Splatting and Meshingcited by 138
  12. 2024Recent Advances in 3D Gaussian Splattingcited by 131
38 more
  1. 2024Revising Densification in Gaussian Splattingcited by 128
  2. 2024latentSplat: Autoencoding Variational Gaussians for Fast Generalizable 3D Reconstructioncited by 118
  3. 2024RaDe-GS: Rasterizing Depth in Gaussian Splattingcited by 111
  4. 20243D Gaussian as a New Era: A Surveycited by 104
  5. 2024SLAM3R: Real-Time Dense Scene Reconstruction from Monocular RGB Videoscited by 102
  6. 2024Expressive Whole-Body 3D Gaussian Avatarcited by 89
  7. 20243DGUT: Enabling Distorted Cameras and Secondary Rays in Gaussian Splattingcited by 88
  8. 2024GSDF: 3DGS Meets SDF for Improved Rendering and Reconstructioncited by 83
  9. 2024AbsGS: Recovering Fine Details for 3D Gaussian Splattingcited by 82
  10. 20243DGSR: Implicit Surface Reconstruction with 3D Gaussian Splattingcited by 79
  11. 20243D Gaussian Splatting: Survey, Technologies, Challenges, and Opportunitiescited by 78
  12. 2024How NeRFs and 3D Gaussian Splatting are Reshaping SLAM: a Surveycited by 72
  13. 2024GaMeS: Mesh-Based Adapting and Modification of Gaussian Splattingcited by 70
  14. 2024Analytic-Splatting: Anti-Aliased 3D Gaussian Splatting via Analytic Integrationcited by 67
  15. 2024GS2Mesh: Surface Reconstruction from Gaussian Splatting via Novel Stereo Viewscited by 67
  16. 2024R2-Gaussian: Rectifying Radiative Gaussian Splatting for Tomographic Reconstructioncited by 67
  17. 2024Meta 3D AssetGen: Text-to-Mesh Generation with High-Quality Geometry, Texture, and PBR Materialscited by 66
  18. 2024CG-SLAM: Efficient Dense RGB-D SLAM in a Consistent Uncertainty-aware 3D Gaussian Fieldcited by 61
  19. 2024LoopSplat: Loop Closure by Registering 3D Gaussian Splatscited by 60
  20. 2024DreamMesh4D: Video-to-4D Generation with Sparse-Controlled Gaussian-Mesh Hybrid Representationcited by 58
  21. 2024Wild-GS: Real-Time Novel View Synthesis from Unconstrained Photo Collectionscited by 56
  22. 2024LP-3DGS: Learning to Prune 3D Gaussian Splattingcited by 55
  23. 2024GeoGaussian: Geometry-aware Gaussian Splatting for Scene Renderingcited by 52
  24. 2024SplatFields: Neural Gaussian Splats for Sparse 3D and 4D Reconstructioncited by 52
  25. 2024VCR-GauS: View Consistent Depth-Normal Regularizer for Gaussian Surface Reconstructioncited by 50
  26. 2024Director3D: Real-world Camera Trajectory and 3D Scene Generation from Textcited by 50
  27. 2024CityGaussianV2: Efficient and Geometrically Accurate Reconstruction for Large-Scale Scenescited by 50
  28. 2025Triangle Splatting for Real-Time Radiance Field Renderingcited by 50
  29. 2024GaussNav: Gaussian Splatting for Visual Navigationcited by 49
  30. 2024Neural Signed Distance Function Inference through Splatting 3D Gaussians Pulled on Zero-Level Setcited by 49
  31. 2025NavDP: Learning Sim-to-Real Navigation Diffusion Policy with Privileged Information Guidancecited by 49
  32. 2024Texture-GS: Disentangling the Geometry and Texture for 3D Gaussian Splatting Editingcited by 47
  33. 2024GaussTR: Foundation Model-Aligned Gaussian Transformer for Self-Supervised 3D Spatial Understandingcited by 46
  34. 2024DeSiRe-GS: 4D Street Gaussians for Static-Dynamic Decomposition and Surface Reconstruction for Urban Driving Scenescited by 45
  35. 2024Dream to Manipulate: Compositional World Models Empowering Robot Imitation Learning with Imaginationcited by 45
  36. 20243DGS-LM: Faster Gaussian-Splatting Optimization with Levenberg-Marquardtcited by 43
  37. 2024GI-GS: Global Illumination Decomposition on Gaussian Splatting for Inverse Renderingcited by 42
  38. 2024Binary Opacity Grids: Capturing Fine Geometric Detail for Mesh-Based View Synthesiscited by 41

50 most cited of 616 All 616 (JSON)