# MeshGS: Adaptive Mesh-Aligned Gaussian Splatting for High-Quality Rendering

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2410.08941 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.08941/

## Key facts

- Cited by 19 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 34 of its 51 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 11 Oct 2024.

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

- [PyTorch: An Imperative Style, High-Performance Deep Learning Library](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1912.01703/) (2019)
- [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)
- [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)
- [TensoRF: Tensorial Radiance Fields](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2203.09517/) (2022)
- [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)
- [Accelerating 3D Deep Learning with PyTorch3D](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2007.08501/) (2020)
- [Implicit Geometric Regularization for Learning Shapes](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2002.10099/) (2020)
- [UNISURF: Unifying Neural Implicit Surfaces and Radiance Fields for Multi-View Reconstruction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2104.10078/) (2021)
- [SuGaR: Surface-Aligned Gaussian Splatting for Efficient 3D Mesh Reconstruction and High-Quality Mesh Rendering](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.12775/) (2023)
- [MonoSDF: Exploring Monocular Geometric Cues for Neural Implicit Surface Reconstruction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2206.00665/) (2022)
- [Baking Neural Radiance Fields for Real-Time View Synthesis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.14645/) (2021)
- [Neuralangelo: High-Fidelity Neural Surface Reconstruction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2306.03092/) (2023)
- [Modular Primitives for High-Performance Differentiable Rendering](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2011.03277/) (2020)
- [MobileNeRF: Exploiting the Polygon Rasterization Pipeline for Efficient Neural Field Rendering on Mobile Architectures](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2208.00277/) (2022)
- [GaussianAvatars: Photorealistic Head Avatars with Rigged 3D Gaussians](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.02069/) (2023)
- [Differentiable Surface Splatting for Point-based Geometry Processing](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1906.04173/) (2019)
- [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)
- [Point-Based Neural Rendering with Per-View Optimization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2109.02369/) (2021)
- [Delicate Textured Mesh Recovery from NeRF via Adaptive Surface Refinement](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.02091/) (2023)
- [GaMeS: Mesh-Based Adapting and Modification of Gaussian Splatting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2402.01459/) (2024)
- [Adaptive Shells for Efficient Neural Radiance Field Rendering](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.10091/) (2023)
- [Urban Radiance Field Representation with Deformable Neural Mesh Primitives](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2307.10776/) (2023)

## Built on by (most cited first, 19 of 19)

- [GeoSplatting: Towards Geometry Guided Gaussian Splatting for Physically-based Inverse Rendering](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.24204/) (2024)
- [GauSTAR: Gaussian Surface Tracking and Reconstruction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2501.10283/) (2025)
- [Radiance Meshes for Volumetric Reconstruction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2512.04076/) (2025)
- [CityGo: Lightweight Urban Modeling and Rendering with Proxy Buildings and Residual Gaussians](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.21041/) (2025)
- [Sat2City v2: Native 3D City Asset Generation from a Single Satellite Image](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2606.24138/) (2026)
- [3D Gaussian Splatting with Normal Information for Mesh Extraction and Improved Rendering](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2501.08370/) (2025)
- [Radiant Triangle Soup with Soft Connectivity Forces for 3D Reconstruction and Novel View Synthesis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.23642/) (2025)
- [UAVTwin: Neural Digital Twins for UAVs using Gaussian Splatting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2504.02158/) (2025)
- [Hybrid Mesh-Gaussian Representation for Efficient Indoor Scene Reconstruction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2506.06988/) (2025)
- [MrGS: Multi-modal Radiance Fields with 3D Gaussian Splatting for RGB-Thermal Novel View Synthesis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2511.22997/) (2025)
- [PolarGS: Polarimetric Cues for Ambiguity-Free Gaussian Splatting with Accurate Geometry Recovery](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2512.00794/) (2025)
- [LumiMotion: Improving Gaussian Relighting with Scene Dynamics](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2604.10994/) (2026)
- [Heat Kernel Textures: the Geodesic Gaussians That Do Not Splat](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2609.07557/) (2026)
- [OMeGa: Joint Optimization of Explicit Meshes and Gaussian Splats for Robust Scene-Level Surface Reconstruction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2509.24308/) (2025)
- [GauSSmart: Enhanced 3D Reconstruction through 2D Foundation Models and Geometric Filtering](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2510.14270/) (2025)
- [Gaussian Mesh Renderer for Lightweight Differentiable Rendering](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2602.14493/) (2026)
- [Gaussian-Voxel Duet: A Dual-Scaffolding Hybrid Representation for Fast and Accurate Monocular Surface Reconstruction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2605.26616/) (2026)
- [Mesh2GS: White-Box 3DGS Construction via Plenoptic Sampling](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2606.21898/) (2026)
- [Gaussian Sculpting: End-to-End Controllable Surface Reconstruction via Field Optimization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2608.10602/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Recently, 3D Gaussian splatting has gained attention for its capability to generate high-fidelity rendering results. At the same time, most applications such as games, animation, and AR/VR use mesh-based representations to represent and render 3D scenes. We propose a novel approach that integrates mesh representation with 3D Gaussian splats to perform high-quality rendering of reconstructed real-world scenes. In particular, we introduce a distance-based Gaussian splatting technique to align the Gaussian splats with the mesh surface and remove redundant Gaussian splats that do not contribute to the rendering. We consider the distance between each Gaussian splat and the mesh surface to distinguish between tightly-bound and loosely-bound Gaussian splats. The tightly-bound splats are flattened and aligned well with the mesh geometry. The loosely-bound Gaussian splats are used to account for the artifacts in reconstructed 3D meshes in terms of rendering. We present a training strategy of binding Gaussian splats to the mesh geometry, and take into account both types of splats. In this context, we introduce several regularization techniques aimed at precisely aligning tightly-bound Gaussian splats with the mesh surface during the training process. We validate the effectiveness of our method on large and unbounded scene from mip-NeRF 360 and Deep Blending datasets. Our method surpasses recent mesh-based neural rendering techniques by achieving a 2dB higher PSNR, and outperforms mesh-based Gaussian splatting methods by 1.3 dB PSNR, particularly on the outdoor mip-NeRF 360 dataset, demonstrating better rendering quality. We provide analyses for each type of Gaussian splat and achieve a reduction in the number of Gaussian splats by 30% compared to the original 3D Gaussian splatting.