# DN-Splatter: Depth and Normal Priors for Gaussian Splatting and Meshing

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2403.17822 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.17822/

## Key facts

- Cited by 138 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 52 of its 73 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 26 Mar 2024.

## Builds on (most cited first, 30 of 52)

- [PyTorch: An Imperative Style, High-Performance Deep Learning Library](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1912.01703/) (2019)
- [3D Gaussian Splatting for Real-Time Radiance Field Rendering](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2308.04079/) (2023)
- [Mip-NeRF 360: Unbounded Anti-Aliased Neural Radiance Fields](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2111.12077/) (2021)
- [NeuS: Learning Neural Implicit Surfaces by Volume Rendering for Multi-view Reconstruction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2106.10689/) (2021)
- [Depth Anything: Unleashing the Power of Large-Scale Unlabeled Data](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2401.10891/) (2024)
- [Volume Rendering of Neural Implicit Surfaces](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2106.12052/) (2021)
- [The Replica Dataset: A Digital Replica of Indoor Spaces](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1906.05797/) (2019)
- [Unsupervised Monocular Depth Estimation with Left-Right Consistency](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1609.03677/) (2016)
- [Unsupervised Learning of Depth and Ego-Motion from Video](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1704.07813/) (2017)
- [ScanNet++: A High-Fidelity Dataset of 3D Indoor Scenes](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2308.11417/) (2023)
- [Depth-supervised NeRF: Fewer Views and Faster Training for Free](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2107.02791/) (2021)
- [Open3D: A Modern Library for 3D Data Processing](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1801.09847/) (2018)
- [ZoeDepth: Zero-shot Transfer by Combining Relative and Metric Depth](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2302.12288/) (2023)
- [SuGaR: Surface-Aligned Gaussian Splatting for Efficient 3D Mesh Reconstruction and High-Quality Mesh Rendering](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.12775/) (2023)
- [RegNeRF: Regularizing Neural Radiance Fields for View Synthesis from Sparse Inputs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2112.00724/) (2021)
- [Nerfstudio: A Modular Framework for Neural Radiance Field Development](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2302.04264/) (2023)
- [Ref-NeRF: Structured View-Dependent Appearance for Neural Radiance Fields](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2112.03907/) (2021)
- [MonoSDF: Exploring Monocular Geometric Cues for Neural Implicit Surface Reconstruction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2206.00665/) (2022)
- [Neuralangelo: High-Fidelity Neural Surface Reconstruction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2306.03092/) (2023)
- [Deeper Depth Prediction with Fully Convolutional Residual Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1606.00373/) (2016)
- [Metric3Dv2: A Versatile Monocular Geometric Foundation Model for Zero-shot Metric Depth and Surface Normal Estimation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.15506/) (2024)
- [Omnidata: A Scalable Pipeline for Making Multi-Task Mid-Level Vision Datasets from 3D Scans](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2110.04994/) (2021)
- [Dense Depth Priors for Neural Radiance Fields from Sparse Input Views](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2112.03288/) (2021)
- [GaussianShader: 3D Gaussian Splatting with Shading Functions for Reflective Surfaces](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.17977/) (2023)
- [SparseNeRF: Distilling Depth Ranking for Few-shot Novel View Synthesis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.16196/) (2023)
- [GS-IR: 3D Gaussian Splatting for Inverse Rendering](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.16473/) (2023)
- [Consistent Video Depth Estimation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2004.15021/) (2020)
- [Working hard to know your neighbor's margins: Local descriptor learning loss](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1705.10872/) (2017)
- [Atlas: End-to-End 3D Scene Reconstruction from Posed Images](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2003.10432/) (2020)
- [NerfingMVS: Guided Optimization of Neural Radiance Fields for Indoor Multi-view Stereo](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2109.01129/) (2021)

## Built on by (most cited first, 30 of 138)

- [DepthSplat: Connecting Gaussian Splatting and Depth](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.13862/) (2024)
- [AbsGS: Recovering Fine Details for 3D Gaussian Splatting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.10484/) (2024)
- [VCR-GauS: View Consistent Depth-Normal Regularizer for Gaussian Surface Reconstruction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.05774/) (2024)
- [Neural Signed Distance Function Inference through Splatting 3D Gaussians Pulled on Zero-Level Set](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.14189/) (2024)
- [DeSiRe-GS: 4D Street Gaussians for Static-Dynamic Decomposition and Surface Reconstruction for Urban Driving Scenes](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2411.11921/) (2024)
- [SplatLoc: 3D Gaussian Splatting-based Visual Localization for Augmented Reality](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2409.14067/) (2024)
- [GeoLRM: Geometry-Aware Large Reconstruction Model for High-Quality 3D Gaussian Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.15333/) (2024)
- [SeaSplat: Representing Underwater Scenes with 3D Gaussian Splatting and a Physically Grounded Image Formation Model](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2409.17345/) (2024)
- [GaussianRoom: Improving 3D Gaussian Splatting with SDF Guidance and Monocular Cues for Indoor Scene Reconstruction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2405.19671/) (2024)
- [FatesGS: Fast and Accurate Sparse-View Surface Reconstruction using Gaussian Splatting with Depth-Feature Consistency](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2501.04628/) (2025)
- [Rethinking End-to-End 2D to 3D Scene Segmentation in Gaussian Splatting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.14029/) (2025)
- [OMNI-DC: Highly Robust Depth Completion with Multiresolution Depth Integration](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2411.19278/) (2024)
- [Trim 3D Gaussian Splatting for Accurate Geometry Representation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.07499/) (2024)
- [LetsGo: Large-Scale Garage Modeling and Rendering via LiDAR-Assisted Gaussian Primitives](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.09748/) (2024)
- [MVSAnywhere: Zero-Shot Multi-View Stereo](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.22430/) (2025)
- [TransAnimate: Taming Layer Diffusion to Generate RGBA Video](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.17934/) (2025)
- [VR-Robo: A Real-to-Sim-to-Real Framework for Visual Robot Navigation and Locomotion](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2502.01536/) (2025)
- [MAtCha Gaussians: Atlas of Charts for High-Quality Geometry and Photorealism From Sparse Views](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2412.06767/) (2024)
- [Multi-view Reconstruction via SfM-guided Monocular Depth Estimation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.14483/) (2025)
- [MTGS: Multi-Traversal Gaussian Splatting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.12552/) (2025)
- [GeoSVR: Taming Sparse Voxels for Geometrically Accurate Surface Reconstruction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2509.18090/) (2025)
- [MVG-Splatting: Multi-View Guided Gaussian Splatting with Adaptive Quantile-Based Geometric Consistency Densification](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.11840/) (2024)
- [DeGauss: Dynamic-Static Decomposition with Gaussian Splatting for Distractor-free 3D Reconstruction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.13176/) (2025)
- [PanoGS: Gaussian-based Panoptic Segmentation for 3D Open Vocabulary Scene Understanding](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.18107/) (2025)
- [DROID-Splat: Combining end-to-end SLAM with 3D Gaussian Splatting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2411.17660/) (2024)
- [GS-ID: Illumination Decomposition on Gaussian Splatting via Adaptive Light Aggregation and Diffusion-Guided Material Priors](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2408.08524/) (2024)
- [ProEdit: Simple Progression is All You Need for High-Quality 3D Scene Editing](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2411.05006/) (2024)
- [EmbodiedSplat: Personalized Real-to-Sim-to-Real Navigation with Gaussian Splats from a Mobile Device](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2509.17430/) (2025)
- [MonoGSDF: Exploring Monocular Geometric Cues for Gaussian Splatting-Guided Implicit Surface Reconstruction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2411.16898/) (2024)
- [GS-Occ3D: Scaling Vision-only Occupancy Reconstruction with Gaussian Splatting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2507.19451/) (2025)

## Abstract (arXiv)

High-fidelity 3D reconstruction of common indoor scenes is crucial for VR and AR applications. 3D Gaussian splatting, a novel differentiable rendering technique, has achieved state-of-the-art novel view synthesis results with high rendering speeds and relatively low training times. However, its performance on scenes commonly seen in indoor datasets is poor due to the lack of geometric constraints during optimization. In this work, we explore the use of readily accessible geometric cues to enhance Gaussian splatting optimization in challenging, ill-posed, and textureless scenes. We extend 3D Gaussian splatting with depth and normal cues to tackle challenging indoor datasets and showcase techniques for efficient mesh extraction. Specifically, we regularize the optimization procedure with depth information, enforce local smoothness of nearby Gaussians, and use off-the-shelf monocular networks to achieve better alignment with the true scene geometry. We propose an adaptive depth loss based on the gradient of color images, improving depth estimation and novel view synthesis results over various baselines. Our simple yet effective regularization technique enables direct mesh extraction from the Gaussian representation, yielding more physically accurate reconstructions of indoor scenes.