# Taming 3DGS: High-Quality Radiance Fields with Limited Resources

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2406.15643 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.15643/

## Key facts

- Cited by 204 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 34 of its 49 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 21 Jun 2024.

## Builds on (most cited first, 30 of 34)

- [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)
- [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)
- [Zip-NeRF: Anti-Aliased Grid-Based Neural Radiance Fields](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2304.06706/) (2023)
- [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)
- [Text-to-3D using Gaussian Splatting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2309.16585/) (2023)
- [Function4D: Real-time Human Volumetric Capture from Very Sparse Consumer RGBD Sensors](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2105.01859/) (2021)
- [Compressed 3D Gaussian Splatting for Accelerated Novel View Synthesis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2401.02436/) (2023)
- [A Hierarchical 3D Gaussian Representation for Real-Time Rendering of Very Large Datasets](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.12080/) (2024)
- [Mini-Splatting: Representing Scenes with a Constrained Number of Gaussians](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.14166/) (2024)
- [Stable View Synthesis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2011.07233/) (2020)
- [Modeling Point Clouds with Self-Attention and Gumbel Subset Sampling](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1904.03375/) (2019)
- [Revising Densification in Gaussian Splatting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.06109/) (2024)
- [F2-NeRF: Fast Neural Radiance Field Training with Free Camera Trajectories](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.15951/) (2023)
- [RadSplat: Radiance Field-Informed Gaussian Splatting for Robust Real-Time Rendering with 900+ FPS](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.13806/) (2024)
- [StopThePop: Sorted Gaussian Splatting for View-Consistent Real-time Rendering](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2402.00525/) (2024)
- [NeRFusion: Fusing Radiance Fields for Large-Scale Scene Reconstruction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2203.11283/) (2022)
- [Neural Nearest Neighbors Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1810.12575/) (2018)
- [GES: Generalized Exponential Splatting for Efficient Radiance Field Rendering](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2402.10128/) (2024)
- [ReLU Fields: The Little Non-linearity That Could](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2205.10824/) (2022)
- [SampleNet: Differentiable Point Cloud Sampling](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1912.03663/) (2019)
- [SMERF: Streamable Memory Efficient Radiance Fields for Real-Time Large-Scene Exploration](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.07541/) (2023)
- [Adaptive Hierarchical Down-Sampling for Point Cloud Classification](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1904.08506/) (2019)

## Built on by (most cited first, 30 of 204)

- [Speedy-Splat: Fast 3D Gaussian Splatting with Sparse Pixels and Sparse Primitives](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2412.00578/) (2024)
- [FlashGS: Efficient 3D Gaussian Splatting for Large-scale and High-resolution Rendering](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2408.07967/) (2024)
- [3DGUT: Enabling Distorted Cameras and Secondary Rays in Gaussian Splatting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2412.12507/) (2024)
- [3DGS-LM: Faster Gaussian-Splatting Optimization with Levenberg-Marquardt](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2409.12892/) (2024)
- [FastGS: Training 3D Gaussian Splatting in 100 Seconds](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2511.04283/) (2025)
- [MaskGaussian: Adaptive 3D Gaussian Representation from Probabilistic Masks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2412.20522/) (2024)
- [DashGaussian: Optimizing 3D Gaussian Splatting in 200 Seconds](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.18402/) (2025)
- [MILo: Mesh-In-the-Loop Gaussian Splatting for Detailed and Efficient Surface Reconstruction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2506.24096/) (2025)
- [On-the-fly Reconstruction for Large-Scale Novel View Synthesis from Unposed Images](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2506.05558/) (2025)
- [Efficient Perspective-Correct 3D Gaussian Splatting Using Hybrid Transparency](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.08129/) (2024)
- [VR-Splatting: Foveated Radiance Field Rendering via 3D Gaussian Splatting and Neural Points](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.17932/) (2024)
- [GaussianSpa: An "Optimizing-Sparsifying" Simplification Framework for Compact and High-Quality 3D Gaussian Splatting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2411.06019/) (2024)
- [Taming Video Diffusion Prior with Scene-Grounding Guidance for 3D Gaussian Splatting from Sparse Inputs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.05082/) (2025)
- [NerfBaselines: Consistent and Reproducible Evaluation of Novel View Synthesis Methods](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.17345/) (2024)
- [LODGE: Level-of-Detail Large-Scale Gaussian Splatting with Efficient Rendering](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.23158/) (2025)
- [MVGS: Multi-view Regulated Gaussian Splatting for Novel View Synthesis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.02103/) (2024)
- [3DGS2: Near Second-order Converging 3D Gaussian Splatting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2501.13975/) (2025)
- [Optimized Minimal 3D Gaussian Splatting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.16924/) (2025)
- [COB-GS: Clear Object Boundaries in 3DGS Segmentation Based on Boundary-Adaptive Gaussian Splitting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.19443/) (2025)
- [StochasticSplats: Stochastic Rasterization for Sorting-Free 3D Gaussian Splatting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.24366/) (2025)
- [iLRM: An Iterative Large 3D Reconstruction Model](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2507.23277/) (2025)
- [Generative Densification: Learning to Densify Gaussians for High-Fidelity Generalizable 3D Reconstruction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2412.06234/) (2024)
- [VRSplat: Fast and Robust Gaussian Splatting for Virtual Reality](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.10144/) (2025)
- [Faster-GS: Analyzing and Improving Gaussian Splatting Optimization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2602.09999/) (2026)
- [HybridGS: Decoupling Transients and Statics with 2D and 3D Gaussian Splatting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2412.03844/) (2024)
- [Efficient Scene Modeling via Structure-Aware and Region-Prioritized 3D Gaussians](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2411.12788/) (2024)
- [Neural Shell Texture Splatting: More Details and Fewer Primitives](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2507.20200/) (2025)
- [Efficient Density Control for 3D Gaussian Splatting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2411.10133/) (2024)
- [SVGS: Enhancing Gaussian Splatting Using Primitives with Spatially Varying Colors](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2411.18966/) (2024)
- [Steepest Descent Density Control for Compact 3D Gaussian Splatting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.05587/) (2025)

## Abstract (arXiv)

3D Gaussian Splatting (3DGS) has transformed novel-view synthesis with its fast, interpretable, and high-fidelity rendering. However, its resource requirements limit its usability. Especially on constrained devices, training performance degrades quickly and often cannot complete due to excessive memory consumption of the model. The method converges with an indefinite number of Gaussians -- many of them redundant -- making rendering unnecessarily slow and preventing its usage in downstream tasks that expect fixed-size inputs. To address these issues, we tackle the challenges of training and rendering 3DGS models on a budget. We use a guided, purely constructive densification process that steers densification toward Gaussians that raise the reconstruction quality. Model size continuously increases in a controlled manner towards an exact budget, using score-based densification of Gaussians with training-time priors that measure their contribution. We further address training speed obstacles: following a careful analysis of 3DGS' original pipeline, we derive faster, numerically equivalent solutions for gradient computation and attribute updates, including an alternative parallelization for efficient backpropagation. We also propose quality-preserving approximations where suitable to reduce training time even further. Taken together, these enhancements yield a robust, scalable solution with reduced training times, lower compute and memory requirements, and high quality. Our evaluation shows that in a budgeted setting, we obtain competitive quality metrics with 3DGS while achieving a 4--5x reduction in both model size and training time. With more generous budgets, our measured quality surpasses theirs. These advances open the door for novel-view synthesis in constrained environments, e.g., mobile devices.