# End-to-End Rate-Distortion Optimized 3D Gaussian Representation

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2406.01597 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.01597/

## Key facts

- Cited by 75 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 31 of its 40 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 9 Apr 2024.

## Builds on (most cited first, 30 of 31)

- [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)
- [Estimating or Propagating Gradients Through Stochastic Neurons for Conditional Computation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1308.3432/) (2013)
- [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)
- [4D Gaussian Splatting for Real-Time Dynamic Scene Rendering](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2310.08528/) (2023)
- [Direct Voxel Grid Optimization: Super-fast Convergence for Radiance Fields Reconstruction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2111.11215/) (2021)
- [PlenOctrees for Real-time Rendering of Neural Radiance Fields](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.14024/) (2021)
- [DreamGaussian: Generative Gaussian Splatting for Efficient 3D Content Creation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2309.16653/) (2023)
- [End-to-end Optimized Image Compression](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1611.01704/) (2016)
- [Mip-Splatting: Alias-free 3D Gaussian Splatting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.16493/) (2023)
- [Ref-NeRF: Structured View-Dependent Appearance for Neural Radiance Fields](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2112.03907/) (2021)
- [Point-NeRF: Point-based Neural Radiance Fields](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2201.08845/) (2022)
- [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)
- [GaussianDreamer: Fast Generation from Text to 3D Gaussians by Bridging 2D and 3D Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2310.08529/) (2023)
- [MERF: Memory-Efficient Radiance Fields for Real-time View Synthesis in Unbounded Scenes](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2302.12249/) (2023)
- [Shape As Points: A Differentiable Poisson Solver](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2106.03452/) (2021)
- [Fourier PlenOctrees for Dynamic Radiance Field Rendering in Real-time](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2202.08614/) (2022)
- [Compact 3D Scene Representation via Self-Organizing Gaussian Grids](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.13299/) (2023)
- [Variable Bitrate Neural Fields](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2206.07707/) (2022)
- [Compressible-composable NeRF via Rank-residual Decomposition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2205.14870/) (2022)
- [HumanGaussian: Text-Driven 3D Human Generation with Gaussian Splatting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.17061/) (2023)
- [End-to-end optimization of nonlinear transform codes for perceptual quality](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1607.05006/) (2016)
- [Compressing Volumetric Radiance Fields to 1 MB](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2211.16386/) (2022)
- [Masked Wavelet Representation for Compact Neural Radiance Fields](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2212.09069/) (2022)
- [Compressing Explicit Voxel Grid Representations: fast NeRFs become also small](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2210.12782/) (2022)
- [SHACIRA: Scalable HAsh-grid Compression for Implicit Neural Representations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2309.15848/) (2023)

## Built on by (most cited first, 30 of 75)

- [3DGS.zip: A survey on 3D Gaussian Splatting Compression Methods](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.09510/) (2024)
- [HAC++: Towards 100X Compression of 3D Gaussian Splatting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2501.12255/) (2025)
- [Fast Feedforward 3D Gaussian Splatting Compression](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.08017/) (2024)
- [MEGA: Memory-Efficient 4D Gaussian Splatting for Dynamic Scenes](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.13613/) (2024)
- [MaskGaussian: Adaptive 3D Gaussian Representation from Probabilistic Masks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2412.20522/) (2024)
- [CAT-3DGS: A Context-Adaptive Triplane Approach to Rate-Distortion-Optimized 3DGS Compression](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.00357/) (2025)
- [MoDec-GS: Global-to-Local Motion Decomposition and Temporal Interval Adjustment for Compact Dynamic 3D Gaussian Splatting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2501.03714/) (2025)
- [GaussianSpa: An "Optimizing-Sparsifying" Simplification Framework for Compact and High-Quality 3D Gaussian Splatting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2411.06019/) (2024)
- [LM-Gaussian: Boost Sparse-view 3D Gaussian Splatting with Large Model Priors](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2409.03456/) (2024)
- [Compression of 3D Gaussian Splatting with Optimized Feature Planes and Standard Video Codecs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2501.03399/) (2025)
- [Locality-aware Gaussian Compression for Fast and High-quality Rendering](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2501.05757/) (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)
- [Steepest Descent Density Control for Compact 3D Gaussian Splatting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.05587/) (2025)
- [Hybrid 3D-4D Gaussian Splatting for Fast Dynamic Scene Representation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.13215/) (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)
- [GSCodec Studio: A Modular Framework for Gaussian Splat Compression](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2506.01822/) (2025)
- [FlexGaussian: Flexible and Cost-Effective Training-Free Compression for 3D Gaussian Splatting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2507.06671/) (2025)
- [CF3: Compact and Fast 3D Feature Fields](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2508.05254/) (2025)
- [CaRtGS: Computational Alignment for Real-Time Gaussian Splatting SLAM](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.00486/) (2024)
- [SizeGS: Size-aware Compression of 3D Gaussian Splatting via Mixed Integer Programming](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2412.05808/) (2024)
- [TinySplat: Feedforward Approach for Generating Compact 3D Scene Representation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2506.09479/) (2025)
- [D-FCGS: Feedforward Compression of Dynamic Gaussian Splatting for Free-Viewpoint Videos](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2507.05859/) (2025)
- [3D Gaussian Splatting Data Compression with Mixture of Priors](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.03310/) (2025)
- [Improving 3D Gaussian Splatting Compression by Scene-Adaptive Lattice Vector Quantization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2509.13482/) (2025)
- [Feed-Forward 3D Gaussian Splatting Compression with Long-Context Modeling](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2512.00877/) (2025)
- [Motion Matters: Compact Gaussian Streaming for Free-Viewpoint Video Reconstruction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.16533/) (2025)
- [CAT-3DGS Pro: A New Benchmark for Efficient 3DGS Compression](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.12862/) (2025)
- [Optimized 3D Gaussian Splatting using Coarse-to-Fine Image Frequency Modulation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.14475/) (2025)

## Abstract (arXiv)

3D Gaussian Splatting (3DGS) has become an emerging technique with remarkable potential in 3D representation and image rendering. However, the substantial storage overhead of 3DGS significantly impedes its practical applications. In this work, we formulate the compact 3D Gaussian learning as an end-to-end Rate-Distortion Optimization (RDO) problem and propose RDO-Gaussian that can achieve flexible and continuous rate control. RDO-Gaussian addresses two main issues that exist in current schemes: 1) Different from prior endeavors that minimize the rate under the fixed distortion, we introduce dynamic pruning and entropy-constrained vector quantization (ECVQ) that optimize the rate and distortion at the same time. 2) Previous works treat the colors of each Gaussian equally, while we model the colors of different regions and materials with learnable numbers of parameters. We verify our method on both real and synthetic scenes, showcasing that RDO-Gaussian greatly reduces the size of 3D Gaussian over 40x, and surpasses existing methods in rate-distortion performance.