# Compact 3D Scene Representation via Self-Organizing Gaussian Grids

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2312.13299 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.13299/

## Key facts

- Cited by 151 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 23 of its 45 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 19 Dec 2023.

## Builds on (most cited first, 23 of 23)

- [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)
- [Mip-NeRF 360: Unbounded Anti-Aliased Neural Radiance Fields](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2111.12077/) (2021)
- [Plenoxels: Radiance Fields without Neural Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2112.05131/) (2021)
- [TensoRF: Tensorial Radiance Fields](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2203.09517/) (2022)
- [NeRF in the Wild: Neural Radiance Fields for Unconstrained Photo Collections](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2008.02268/) (2020)
- [Direct Voxel Grid Optimization: Super-fast Convergence for Radiance Fields Reconstruction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2111.11215/) (2021)
- [Neural Sparse Voxel Fields](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2007.11571/) (2020)
- [PlenOctrees for Real-time Rendering of Neural Radiance Fields](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.14024/) (2021)
- [Dynamic 3D Gaussians: Tracking by Persistent Dynamic View Synthesis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2308.09713/) (2023)
- [FastNeRF: High-Fidelity Neural Rendering at 200FPS](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.10380/) (2021)
- [Baking Neural Radiance Fields for Real-Time View Synthesis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.14645/) (2021)
- [DeepVoxels: Learning Persistent 3D Feature Embeddings](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1812.01024/) (2018)
- [Advances in Neural Rendering](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2111.05849/) (2021)
- [MERF: Memory-Efficient Radiance Fields for Real-time View Synthesis in Unbounded Scenes](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2302.12249/) (2023)
- [Point-Based Neural Rendering with Per-View Optimization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2109.02369/) (2021)
- [Variable Bitrate Neural Fields](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2206.07707/) (2022)
- [ReLU Fields: The Little Non-linearity That Could](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2205.10824/) (2022)
- [Compressing Volumetric Radiance Fields to 1 MB](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2211.16386/) (2022)
- [Compressing Explicit Voxel Grid Representations: fast NeRFs become also small](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2210.12782/) (2022)
- [VQ-NeRF: Neural Reflectance Decomposition and Editing with Vector Quantization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2310.11864/) (2023)
- [Improved Evaluation and Generation of Grid Layouts using Distance Preservation Quality and Linear Assignment Sorting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2205.04255/) (2022)
- [MF-NeRF: Memory Efficient NeRF with Mixed-Feature Hash Table](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2304.12587/) (2023)

## Built on by (most cited first, 30 of 151)

- [A Survey on 3D Gaussian Splatting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2401.03890/) (2024)
- [HAC: Hash-grid Assisted Context for 3D Gaussian Splatting Compression](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.14530/) (2024)
- [GaussianPro: 3D Gaussian Splatting with Progressive Propagation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2402.14650/) (2024)
- [CityGaussian: Real-time High-quality Large-Scale Scene Rendering with Gaussians](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.01133/) (2024)
- [Recent Advances in 3D Gaussian Splatting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.11134/) (2024)
- [RadSplat: Radiance Field-Informed Gaussian Splatting for Robust Real-Time Rendering with 900+ FPS](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.13806/) (2024)
- [Pixel-GS: Density Control with Pixel-aware Gradient for 3D Gaussian Splatting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.15530/) (2024)
- [ContextGS: Compact 3D Gaussian Splatting with Anchor Level Context Model](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2405.20721/) (2024)
- [Dynamic Gaussian Marbles for Novel View Synthesis of Casual Monocular Videos](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.18717/) (2024)
- [PUP 3D-GS: Principled Uncertainty Pruning for 3D Gaussian Splatting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.10219/) (2024)
- [DreamScene360: Unconstrained Text-to-3D Scene Generation with Panoramic Gaussian Splatting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.06903/) (2024)
- [3D Gaussian Splatting: Survey, Technologies, Challenges, and Opportunities](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.17418/) (2024)
- [End-to-End Rate-Distortion Optimized 3D Gaussian Representation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.01597/) (2024)
- [3DGS.zip: A survey on 3D Gaussian Splatting Compression Methods](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.09510/) (2024)
- [MesonGS: Post-training Compression of 3D Gaussians via Efficient Attribute Transformation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2409.09756/) (2024)
- [Fast Feedforward 3D Gaussian Splatting Compression](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.08017/) (2024)
- [CityGaussianV2: Efficient and Geometrically Accurate Reconstruction for Large-Scale Scenes](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2411.00771/) (2024)
- [CAT-3DGS: A Context-Adaptive Triplane Approach to Rate-Distortion-Optimized 3DGS Compression](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.00357/) (2025)
- [LangSplatV2: High-dimensional 3D Language Gaussian Splatting with 450+ FPS](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2507.07136/) (2025)
- [Textured Gaussians for Enhanced 3D Scene Appearance Modeling](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2411.18625/) (2024)
- [Deformable Beta Splatting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2501.18630/) (2025)
- [HEMGS: A Hybrid Entropy Model for 3D Gaussian Splatting Data Compression](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2411.18473/) (2024)
- [Robust Dual Gaussian Splatting for Immersive Human-centric Volumetric Videos](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2409.08353/) (2024)
- [MoDec-GS: Global-to-Local Motion Decomposition and Temporal Interval Adjustment for Compact Dynamic 3D Gaussian Splatting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2501.03714/) (2025)
- [V^3: Viewing Volumetric Videos on Mobiles via Streamable 2D Dynamic Gaussians](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2409.13648/) (2024)
- [Sort-free Gaussian Splatting via Weighted Sum Rendering](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.18931/) (2024)
- [GaussianSpa: An "Optimizing-Sparsifying" Simplification Framework for Compact and High-Quality 3D Gaussian Splatting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2411.06019/) (2024)
- [FlowR: Flowing from Sparse to Dense 3D Reconstructions](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2504.01647/) (2025)
- [Compact 3D Gaussian Splatting For Dense Visual SLAM](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.11247/) (2024)
- [Compact 3D Gaussian Splatting for Static and Dynamic Radiance Fields](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2408.03822/) (2024)

## Abstract (arXiv)

3D Gaussian Splatting has recently emerged as a highly promising technique for modeling of static 3D scenes. In contrast to Neural Radiance Fields, it utilizes efficient rasterization allowing for very fast rendering at high-quality. However, the storage size is significantly higher, which hinders practical deployment, e.g. on resource constrained devices. In this paper, we introduce a compact scene representation organizing the parameters of 3D Gaussian Splatting (3DGS) into a 2D grid with local homogeneity, ensuring a drastic reduction in storage requirements without compromising visual quality during rendering. Central to our idea is the explicit exploitation of perceptual redundancies present in natural scenes. In essence, the inherent nature of a scene allows for numerous permutations of Gaussian parameters to equivalently represent it. To this end, we propose a novel highly parallel algorithm that regularly arranges the high-dimensional Gaussian parameters into a 2D grid while preserving their neighborhood structure. During training, we further enforce local smoothness between the sorted parameters in the grid. The uncompressed Gaussians use the same structure as 3DGS, ensuring a seamless integration with established renderers. Our method achieves a reduction factor of 17x to 42x in size for complex scenes with no increase in training time, marking a substantial leap forward in the domain of 3D scene distribution and consumption. Additional information can be found on our project page: https://fraunhoferhhi.github.io/Self-Organizing-Gaussians/