# 3D Gaussian Splatting with Deferred Reflection

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2404.18454 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.18454/

## Key facts

- Cited by 63 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 22 of its 31 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 29 Apr 2024.

## Builds on (most cited first, 22 of 22)

- [Segment Anything](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2304.02643/) (2023)
- [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)
- [PlenOctrees for Real-time Rendering of Neural Radiance Fields](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.14024/) (2021)
- [MVSNeRF: Fast Generalizable Radiance Field Reconstruction from Multi-View Stereo](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.15595/) (2021)
- [Depth-supervised NeRF: Fewer Views and Faster Training for Free](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2107.02791/) (2021)
- [Neural Fields in Visual Computing and Beyond](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2111.11426/) (2021)
- [FastNeRF: High-Fidelity Neural Rendering at 200FPS](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.10380/) (2021)
- [NeRV: Neural Reflectance and Visibility Fields for Relighting and View Synthesis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2012.03927/) (2020)
- [Baking Neural Radiance Fields for Real-Time View Synthesis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.14645/) (2021)
- [Putting NeRF on a Diet: Semantically Consistent Few-Shot View Synthesis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2104.00677/) (2021)
- [NeRD: Neural Reflectance Decomposition from Image Collections](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2012.03918/) (2020)
- [Extracting Triangular 3D Models, Materials, and Lighting From Images](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2111.12503/) (2021)
- [Advances in Neural Rendering](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2111.05849/) (2021)
- [PhySG: Inverse Rendering with Spherical Gaussians for Physics-based Material Editing and Relighting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2104.00674/) (2021)
- [Deferred Neural Rendering: Image Synthesis using Neural Textures](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1904.12356/) (2019)
- [GaussianShader: 3D Gaussian Splatting with Shading Functions for Reflective Surfaces](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.17977/) (2023)
- [Modeling Indirect Illumination for Inverse Rendering](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2204.06837/) (2022)
- [NeRO: Neural Geometry and BRDF Reconstruction of Reflective Objects from Multiview Images](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.17398/) (2023)
- [NeRFactor: Neural Factorization of Shape and Reflectance Under an Unknown Illumination](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2106.01970/) (2021)
- [Neural Point Catacaustics for Novel-View Synthesis of Reflections](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2301.01087/) (2023)
- [ENVIDR: Implicit Differentiable Renderer with Neural Environment Lighting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.13022/) (2023)

## Built on by (most cited first, 30 of 63)

- [3D Gaussian Splatting: Survey, Technologies, Challenges, and Opportunities](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.17418/) (2024)
- [GS^3: Efficient Relighting with Triple Gaussian Splatting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.11419/) (2024)
- [HRAvatar: High-Quality and Relightable Gaussian Head Avatar](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.08224/) (2025)
- [SpectroMotion: Dynamic 3D Reconstruction of Specular Scenes](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.17249/) (2024)
- [MaterialRefGS: Reflective Gaussian Splatting with Multi-view Consistent Material Inference](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2510.11387/) (2025)
- [Relightable Full-Body Gaussian Codec Avatars](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2501.14726/) (2025)
- [MVGS: Multi-view Regulated Gaussian Splatting for Novel View Synthesis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.02103/) (2024)
- [TransparentGS: Fast Inverse Rendering of Transparent Objects with Gaussians](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2504.18768/) (2025)
- [When Gaussian Meets Surfel: Ultra-fast High-fidelity Radiance Field Rendering](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2504.17545/) (2025)
- [GlossyGS: Inverse Rendering of Glossy Objects with 3D Gaussian Splatting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.13349/) (2024)
- [Geometry Field Splatting with Gaussian Surfels](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2411.17067/) (2024)
- [GS-ROR2: Bidirectional-guided 3DGS and SDF for Reflective Object Relighting and Reconstruction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.18544/) (2024)
- [RTR-GS: 3D Gaussian Splatting for Inverse Rendering with Radiance Transfer and Reflection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2507.07733/) (2025)
- [MeshSplats: Mesh-Based Rendering with Gaussian Splatting Initialization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2502.07754/) (2025)
- [RGM: Reconstructing High-fidelity 3D Car Assets with Relightable 3D-GS Generative Model from a Single Image](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.08181/) (2024)
- [Normal-GS: 3D Gaussian Splatting with Normal-Involved Rendering](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.20593/) (2024)
- [Digital Twin Generation from Visual Data: A Survey](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2504.13159/) (2025)
- [Progressive Radiance Distillation for Inverse Rendering with Gaussian Splatting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2408.07595/) (2024)
- [2DGH: 2D Gaussian-Hermite Splatting for High-quality Rendering and Better Geometry Features](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2408.16982/) (2024)
- [PR-ENDO: Physically Based Relightable Gaussian Splatting for Endoscopy](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2411.12510/) (2024)
- [NFL-BA: Near-Field Light Bundle Adjustment for SLAM in Dynamic Lighting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2412.13176/) (2024)
- [Reflections Unlock: Geometry-Aware Reflection Disentanglement in 3D Gaussian Splatting for Photorealistic Scenes Rendering](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2507.06103/) (2025)
- [RGS-DR: Deferred Reflections and Residual Shading in 2D Gaussian Splatting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2504.18468/) (2025)
- [TextureSplat: Per-Primitive Texture Mapping for Reflective Gaussian Splatting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2506.13348/) (2025)
- [Reflect3r: Single-View 3D Stereo Reconstruction Aided by Mirror Reflections](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2509.20607/) (2025)
- [NeRFs are Mirror Detectors: Using Structural Similarity for Multi-View Mirror Scene Reconstruction with 3D Surface Primitives](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2501.04074/) (2025)
- [Real-time Global Illumination for Dynamic 3D Gaussian Scenes](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.17897/) (2025)
- [Beyond Reconstruction: A Physics Based Neural Deferred Shader for Photo-realistic Rendering](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2504.12273/) (2025)
- [GOGS: High-Fidelity Geometry and Relighting for Glossy Objects via Gaussian Surfels](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2508.14563/) (2025)
- [ROSGS: Relightable Outdoor Scenes With Gaussian Splatting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2509.11275/) (2025)

## Abstract (arXiv)

The advent of neural and Gaussian-based radiance field methods have achieved great success in the field of novel view synthesis. However, specular reflection remains non-trivial, as the high frequency radiance field is notoriously difficult to fit stably and accurately. We present a deferred shading method to effectively render specular reflection with Gaussian splatting. The key challenge comes from the environment map reflection model, which requires accurate surface normal while simultaneously bottlenecks normal estimation with discontinuous gradients. We leverage the per-pixel reflection gradients generated by deferred shading to bridge the optimization process of neighboring Gaussians, allowing nearly correct normal estimations to gradually propagate and eventually spread over all reflective objects. Our method significantly outperforms state-of-the-art techniques and concurrent work in synthesizing high-quality specular reflection effects, demonstrating a consistent improvement of peak signal-to-noise ratio (PSNR) for both synthetic and real-world scenes, while running at a frame rate almost identical to vanilla Gaussian splatting.