# NexusSplats: Efficient 3D Gaussian Splatting in the Wild

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2411.14514 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2411.14514/

## Key facts

- Cited by 7 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 43 of its 59 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 21 Nov 2024.

## Builds on (most cited first, 30 of 43)

- [The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Deep Features as a Perceptual Metric](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1801.03924/) (2018)
- [DINOv2: Learning Robust Visual Features without Supervision](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2304.07193/) (2023)
- [Masked Autoencoders Are Scalable Vision Learners](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2111.06377/) (2021)
- [Emerging Properties in Self-Supervised Vision Transformers](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2104.14294/) (2021)
- [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)
- [DeepSDF: Learning Continuous Signed Distance Functions for Shape Representation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1901.05103/) (2019)
- [Occupancy Networks: Learning 3D Reconstruction in Function Space](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1812.03828/) (2018)
- [Mip-NeRF 360: Unbounded Anti-Aliased Neural Radiance Fields](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2111.12077/) (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)
- [NeRF in the Wild: Neural Radiance Fields for Unconstrained Photo Collections](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2008.02268/) (2020)
- [Learning Implicit Fields for Generative Shape Modeling](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1812.02822/) (2018)
- [Direct Voxel Grid Optimization: Super-fast Convergence for Radiance Fields Reconstruction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2111.11215/) (2021)
- [Neural Sparse Voxel Fields](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2007.11571/) (2020)
- [K-Planes: Explicit Radiance Fields in Space, Time, and Appearance](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2301.10241/) (2023)
- [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)
- [Mip-Splatting: Alias-free 3D Gaussian Splatting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.16493/) (2023)
- [Nerfstudio: A Modular Framework for Neural Radiance Field Development](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2302.04264/) (2023)
- [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)
- [Urban Radiance Fields](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2111.14643/) (2021)
- [Compressed 3D Gaussian Splatting for Accelerated Novel View Synthesis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2401.02436/) (2023)
- [VastGaussian: Vast 3D Gaussians for Large Scene Reconstruction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2402.17427/) (2024)
- [WildGaussians: 3D Gaussian Splatting in the Wild](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.08447/) (2024)
- [Compact 3D Scene Representation via Self-Organizing Gaussian Grids](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.13299/) (2023)
- [Hallucinated Neural Radiance Fields in the Wild](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2111.15246/) (2021)
- [CompGS: Smaller and Faster Gaussian Splatting with Vector Quantization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.18159/) (2023)

## Built on by (most cited first, 7 of 7)

- [RobustSplat: Decoupling Densification and Dynamics for Transient-Free 3DGS](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2506.02751/) (2025)
- [ForestSplats: Deformable transient field for Gaussian Splatting in the Wild](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.06179/) (2025)
- [LightCity: An Urban Dataset for Outdoor Inverse Rendering and Reconstruction under Multi-illumination Conditions](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2602.01118/) (2026)
- [Generalizable Sparse-View 3D Reconstruction from Unconstrained Images](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2604.28193/) (2026)
- [DF3DV-1K: A Large-Scale Dataset and Benchmark for Distractor-Free Novel View Synthesis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2604.13416/) (2026)
- [Difix3D-W: Distractor-Free Few-Shot 3D Gaussian Splatting in the Wild](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2604.27422/) (2026)
- [Rectifying Mask via Entropy for Distractor-Free 3DGS in Ambiguous Scenarios](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2606.29496/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Photorealistic 3D reconstruction of unstructured real-world scenes remains challenging due to complex illumination variations and transient occlusions. Existing methods based on Neural Radiance Fields (NeRF) and 3D Gaussian Splatting (3DGS) struggle with inefficient light decoupling and structure-agnostic occlusion handling. To address these limitations, we propose NexusSplats, an approach tailored for efficient and high-fidelity 3D scene reconstruction under complex lighting and occlusion conditions. In particular, NexusSplats leverages a hierarchical light decoupling strategy that performs centralized appearance learning, efficiently and effectively decoupling varying lighting conditions. Furthermore, a structure-aware occlusion handling mechanism is developed, establishing a nexus between 3D and 2D structures for fine-grained occlusion handling. Experimental results demonstrate that NexusSplats achieves state-of-the-art rendering quality and reduces the number of total parameters by 65.4%, leading to 2.7× faster reconstruction.