# ContextGS: Compact 3D Gaussian Splatting with Anchor Level Context Model

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2405.20721 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2405.20721/

## Key facts

- Cited by 98 papers in the map (data through 7 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 29 of its 35 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 31 May 2024.

## Builds on (most cited first, 29 of 29)

- [The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Deep Features as a Perceptual Metric](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1801.03924/) (2018)
- [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)
- [Mip-NeRF: A Multiscale Representation for Anti-Aliasing Neural Radiance Fields](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.13415/) (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)
- [Variational image compression with a scale hyperprior](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1802.01436/) (2018)
- [Conditional Image Generation with PixelCNN Decoders](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1606.05328/) (2016)
- [K-Planes: Explicit Radiance Fields in Space, Time, and Appearance](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2301.10241/) (2023)
- [Depth-supervised NeRF: Fewer Views and Faster Training for Free](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2107.02791/) (2021)
- [Scaffold-GS: Structured 3D Gaussians for View-Adaptive Rendering](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.00109/) (2023)
- [KiloNeRF: Speeding up Neural Radiance Fields with Thousands of Tiny MLPs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.13744/) (2021)
- [LightGaussian: Unbounded 3D Gaussian Compression with 15x Reduction and 200+ FPS](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.17245/) (2023)
- [Compact 3D Gaussian Representation for Radiance Field](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.13681/) (2023)
- [Compressed 3D Gaussian Splatting for Accelerated Novel View Synthesis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2401.02436/) (2023)
- [BungeeNeRF: Progressive Neural Radiance Field for Extreme Multi-scale Scene Rendering](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2112.05504/) (2021)
- [Octree-GS: Towards Consistent Real-time Rendering with LOD-Structured 3D Gaussians](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.17898/) (2024)
- [HAC: Hash-grid Assisted Context for 3D Gaussian Splatting Compression](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.14530/) (2024)
- [EAGLES: Efficient Accelerated 3D Gaussians with Lightweight EncodingS](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.04564/) (2023)
- [Compact 3D Scene Representation via Self-Organizing Gaussian Grids](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.13299/) (2023)
- [Conditional Probability Models for Deep Image Compression](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1801.04260/) (2018)
- [Variable Bitrate Neural Fields](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2206.07707/) (2022)
- [Differentiable Point-Based Radiance Fields for Efficient View Synthesis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2205.14330/) (2022)
- [Masked Wavelet Representation for Compact Neural Radiance Fields](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2212.09069/) (2022)
- [Spectrally Pruned Gaussian Fields with Neural Compensation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2405.00676/) (2024)
- [SHACIRA: Scalable HAsh-grid Compression for Implicit Neural Representations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2309.15848/) (2023)
- [Strivec: Sparse Tri-Vector Radiance Fields](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2307.13226/) (2023)
- [Multiscale Tensor Decomposition and Rendering Equation Encoding for View Synthesis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.03808/) (2023)

## Built on by (most cited first, 30 of 98)

- [3DGS.zip: A survey on 3D Gaussian Splatting Compression Methods](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.09510/) (2024)
- [Fast Feedforward 3D Gaussian Splatting Compression](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.08017/) (2024)
- [CAT-3DGS: A Context-Adaptive Triplane Approach to Rate-Distortion-Optimized 3DGS Compression](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.00357/) (2025)
- [HEMGS: A Hybrid Entropy Model for 3D Gaussian Splatting Data Compression](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2411.18473/) (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)
- [What Is The Best 3D Scene Representation for Robotics? From Geometric to Foundation Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2512.03422/) (2025)
- [4DGC: Rate-Aware 4D Gaussian Compression for Efficient Streamable Free-Viewpoint Video](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.18421/) (2025)
- [PCGS: Progressive Compression of 3D Gaussian Splatting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.08511/) (2025)
- [Optimized Minimal 3D Gaussian Splatting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.16924/) (2025)
- [MonoInstance: Enhancing Monocular Priors via Multi-view Instance Alignment for Neural Rendering and Reconstruction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.18363/) (2025)
- [Efficient Scene Modeling via Structure-Aware and Region-Prioritized 3D Gaussians](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2411.12788/) (2024)
- [NeuralGS: Bridging Neural Fields and 3D Gaussian Splatting for Compact 3D Representations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.23162/) (2025)
- [ReCon-GS: Continuum-Preserved Gaussian Streaming for Fast and Compact Reconstruction of Dynamic Scenes](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2509.24325/) (2025)
- [GoDe: Gaussians on Demand for Progressive Level of Detail and Scalable Compression](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2501.13558/) (2025)
- [4DGCPro: Efficient Hierarchical 4D Gaussian Compression for Progressive Volumetric Video Streaming](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2509.17513/) (2025)
- [SOGS: Second-Order Anchor for Advanced 3D Gaussian Splatting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.07476/) (2025)
- [HybridGS: High-Efficiency Gaussian Splatting Data Compression using Dual-Channel Sparse Representation and Point Cloud Encoder](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.01938/) (2025)
- [Mobile-GS: Real-time Gaussian Splatting for Mobile Devices](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.11531/) (2026)
- [GlobalSplat: Efficient Feed-Forward 3D Gaussian Splatting via Global Scene Tokens](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2604.15284/) (2026)
- [GaussHDR: High Dynamic Range Gaussian Splatting via Learning Unified 3D and 2D Local Tone Mapping](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.10143/) (2025)
- [GSCodec Studio: A Modular Framework for Gaussian Splat Compression](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2506.01822/) (2025)
- [SizeGS: Size-aware Compression of 3D Gaussian Splatting via Mixed Integer Programming](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2412.05808/) (2024)
- [Compressing 3D Gaussian Splatting by Noise-Substituted Vector Quantization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2504.03059/) (2025)
- [Anti-Aliased 2D Gaussian Splatting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2506.11252/) (2025)
- [D-FCGS: Feedforward Compression of Dynamic Gaussian Splatting for Free-Viewpoint Videos](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2507.05859/) (2025)
- [Improving 3D Gaussian Splatting Compression by Scene-Adaptive Lattice Vector Quantization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2509.13482/) (2025)
- [3D Gaussian Splatting Data Compression with Mixture of Priors](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.03310/) (2025)
- [TinySplat: Feedforward Approach for Generating Compact 3D Scene Representation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2506.09479/) (2025)
- [Feed-Forward 3D Gaussian Splatting Compression with Long-Context Modeling](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2512.00877/) (2025)
- [CAT-3DGS Pro: A New Benchmark for Efficient 3DGS Compression](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.12862/) (2025)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Recently, 3D Gaussian Splatting (3DGS) has become a promising framework for novel view synthesis, offering fast rendering speeds and high fidelity. However, the large number of Gaussians and their associated attributes require effective compression techniques. Existing methods primarily compress neural Gaussians individually and independently, i.e., coding all the neural Gaussians at the same time, with little design for their interactions and spatial dependence. Inspired by the effectiveness of the context model in image compression, we propose the first autoregressive model at the anchor level for 3DGS compression in this work. We divide anchors into different levels and the anchors that are not coded yet can be predicted based on the already coded ones in all the coarser levels, leading to more accurate modeling and higher coding efficiency. To further improve the efficiency of entropy coding, e.g., to code the coarsest level with no already coded anchors, we propose to introduce a low-dimensional quantized feature as the hyperprior for each anchor, which can be effectively compressed. Our work pioneers the context model in the anchor level for 3DGS representation, yielding an impressive size reduction of over 100 times compared to vanilla 3DGS and 15 times compared to the most recent state-of-the-art work Scaffold-GS, while achieving comparable or even higher rendering quality.