# Trim 3D Gaussian Splatting for Accurate Geometry Representation

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2406.07499 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.07499/

## Key facts

- Cited by 28 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 27 of its 34 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 11 Jun 2024.

## Builds on (most cited first, 27 of 27)

- [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)
- [NeuS: Learning Neural Implicit Surfaces by Volume Rendering for Multi-view Reconstruction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2106.10689/) (2021)
- [Plenoxels: Radiance Fields without Neural Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2112.05131/) (2021)
- [2D Gaussian Splatting for Geometrically Accurate Radiance Fields](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.17888/) (2024)
- [Volume Rendering of Neural Implicit Surfaces](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2106.12052/) (2021)
- [Direct Voxel Grid Optimization: Super-fast Convergence for Radiance Fields Reconstruction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2111.11215/) (2021)
- [NeRF++: Analyzing and Improving Neural Radiance Fields](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2010.07492/) (2020)
- [KiloNeRF: Speeding up Neural Radiance Fields with Thousands of Tiny MLPs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.13744/) (2021)
- [Zip-NeRF: Anti-Aliased Grid-Based Neural Radiance Fields](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2304.06706/) (2023)
- [SuGaR: Surface-Aligned Gaussian Splatting for Efficient 3D Mesh Reconstruction and High-Quality Mesh Rendering](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.12775/) (2023)
- [Baking Neural Radiance Fields for Real-Time View Synthesis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.14645/) (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)
- [BakedSDF: Meshing Neural SDFs for Real-Time View Synthesis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2302.14859/) (2023)
- [MERF: Memory-Efficient Radiance Fields for Real-time View Synthesis in Unbounded Scenes](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2302.12249/) (2023)
- [High-quality Surface Reconstruction using Gaussian Surfels](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.17774/) (2024)
- [Tri-MipRF: Tri-Mip Representation for Efficient Anti-Aliasing Neural Radiance Fields](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2307.11335/) (2023)
- [NeuSG: Neural Implicit Surface Reconstruction with 3D Gaussian Splatting Guidance](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.00846/) (2023)
- [DN-Splatter: Depth and Normal Priors for Gaussian Splatting and Meshing](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.17822/) (2024)
- [GSDF: 3DGS Meets SDF for Improved Rendering and Reconstruction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.16964/) (2024)
- [GS2Mesh: Surface Reconstruction from Gaussian Splatting via Novel Stereo Views](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.01810/) (2024)
- [Improved Direct Voxel Grid Optimization for Radiance Fields Reconstruction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2206.05085/) (2022)
- [Tetra-NeRF: Representing Neural Radiance Fields Using Tetrahedra](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2304.09987/) (2023)
- [NEDS-SLAM: A Neural Explicit Dense Semantic SLAM Framework using 3D Gaussian Splatting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.11679/) (2024)

## Built on by (most cited first, 28 of 28)

- [CityGaussianV2: Efficient and Geometrically Accurate Reconstruction for Large-Scale Scenes](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2411.00771/) (2024)
- [DeSiRe-GS: 4D Street Gaussians for Static-Dynamic Decomposition and Surface Reconstruction for Urban Driving Scenes](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2411.11921/) (2024)
- [Sparse2DGS: Geometry-Prioritized Gaussian Splatting for Surface Reconstruction from Sparse Views](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2504.20378/) (2025)
- [NeuralGS: Bridging Neural Fields and 3D Gaussian Splatting for Compact 3D Representations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.23162/) (2025)
- [GauSTAR: Gaussian Surface Tracking and Reconstruction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2501.10283/) (2025)
- [Revisiting Depth Representations for Feed-Forward 3D Gaussian Splatting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2506.05327/) (2025)
- [Mipmap-GS: Let Gaussians Deform with Scale-specific Mipmap for Anti-aliasing Rendering](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2408.06286/) (2024)
- [VTGaussian-SLAM: RGBD SLAM for Large Scale Scenes with Splatting View-Tied 3D Gaussians](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2506.02741/) (2025)
- [MeshSplat: Generalizable Sparse-View Surface Reconstruction via Gaussian Splatting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2508.17811/) (2025)
- [ULSR-GS: Ultra Large-scale Surface Reconstruction Gaussian Splatting with Multi-View Geometric Consistency](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2412.01402/) (2024)
- [Gaussian Building Mesh (GBM): Extract a Building's 3D Mesh with Google Earth and Gaussian Splatting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2501.00625/) (2024)
- [Sequence Matters: Harnessing Video Models in 3D Super-Resolution](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2412.11525/) (2024)
- [EvolvingGS: High-Fidelity Streamable Volumetric Video via Evolving 3D Gaussian Representation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.05162/) (2025)
- [TriSplat: Simulation-Ready Feed-Forward 3D Scene Reconstruction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2605.26115/) (2026)
- [Spiking GS: Towards High-Accuracy and Low-Cost Surface Reconstruction via Spiking Neuron-based Gaussian Splatting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.07266/) (2024)
- [Real-Time Spatio-Temporal Reconstruction of Dynamic Endoscopic Scenes with 4D Gaussian Splatting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2411.01218/) (2024)
- [MetroGS: Efficient and Stable Reconstruction of Geometrically Accurate High-Fidelity Large-Scale Scenes](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2511.19172/) (2025)
- [Splatwizard: A Benchmark Toolkit for 3D Gaussian Splatting Compression](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2512.24742/) (2025)
- [Hybrid Mesh-Gaussian Representation for Efficient Indoor Scene Reconstruction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2506.06988/) (2025)
- [Gaussian Set Surface Reconstruction through Per-Gaussian Optimization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2507.18923/) (2025)
- [RayletDF: Raylet Distance Fields for Generalizable 3D Surface Reconstruction from Point Clouds or Gaussians](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2508.09830/) (2025)
- [WaterClear-GS: Optical-Aware Gaussian Splatting for Underwater Reconstruction and Restoration](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2601.19753/) (2026)
- [SGAD-SLAM: Splatting Gaussians at Adjusted Depth for Better Radiance Fields in RGBD SLAM](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.21055/) (2026)
- [A Mixed-Primitive-based Gaussian Splatting Method for Surface Reconstruction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2507.11321/) (2025)
- [Neural-MMGS: Multi-modal Neural Gaussian Splats for Large-Scale Scene Reconstruction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2509.17762/) (2025)
- [CAdam: Context-Adaptive Moment Estimation for 3D Gaussian Densification in Generative Distillation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2605.20872/) (2026)
- [CoMVS-GS: Collaborative Multi-View Stereo and 3D Gaussian Splatting for Surface Reconstruction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2608.18413/) (2026)
- [STARS-GS: Structure-Aware Regularized Gaussian Splatting for Large-Scale Aerial Surface Reconstruction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2609.03447/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

In this paper, we introduce Trim 3D Gaussian Splatting (TrimGS) to reconstruct accurate 3D geometry from images. Previous arts for geometry reconstruction from 3D Gaussians mainly focus on exploring strong geometry regularization. Instead, from a fresh perspective, we propose to obtain accurate 3D geometry of a scene by Gaussian trimming, which selectively removes the inaccurate geometry while preserving accurate structures. To achieve this, we analyze the contributions of individual 3D Gaussians and propose a contribution-based trimming strategy to remove the redundant or inaccurate Gaussians. Furthermore, our experimental and theoretical analyses reveal that a relatively small Gaussian scale is a non-negligible factor in representing and optimizing the intricate details. Therefore the proposed TrimGS maintains relatively small Gaussian scales. In addition, TrimGS is also compatible with the effective geometry regularization strategies in previous arts. When combined with the original 3DGS and the state-of-the-art 2DGS, TrimGS consistently yields more accurate geometry and higher perceptual quality. Our project page is https://trimgs.github.io