# Deformable Radial Kernel Splatting

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2412.11752 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2412.11752/

## Key facts

- Cited by 17 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 53 of its 75 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 16 Dec 2024.

## Builds on (most cited first, 30 of 53)

- [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)
- [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)
- [NeRF++: Analyzing and Improving Neural Radiance Fields](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2010.07492/) (2020)
- [DreamGaussian: Generative Gaussian Splatting for Efficient 3D Content Creation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2309.16653/) (2023)
- [Deformable 3D Gaussians for High-Fidelity Monocular Dynamic Scene Reconstruction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2309.13101/) (2023)
- [Dynamic 3D Gaussians: Tracking by Persistent Dynamic View Synthesis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2308.09713/) (2023)
- [Block-NeRF: Scalable Large Scene Neural View Synthesis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2202.05263/) (2022)
- [Scaffold-GS: Structured 3D Gaussians for View-Adaptive Rendering](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.00109/) (2023)
- [Local Light Field Fusion: Practical View Synthesis with Prescriptive Sampling Guidelines](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1905.00889/) (2019)
- [SuGaR: Surface-Aligned Gaussian Splatting for Efficient 3D Mesh Reconstruction and High-Quality Mesh Rendering](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.12775/) (2023)
- [Real-time Photorealistic Dynamic Scene Representation and Rendering with 4D Gaussian Splatting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2310.10642/) (2023)
- [NeRD: Neural Reflectance Decomposition from Image Collections](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2012.03918/) (2020)
- [DeepVoxels: Learning Persistent 3D Feature Embeddings](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1812.01024/) (2018)
- [SynSin: End-to-end View Synthesis from a Single Image](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1912.08804/) (2019)
- [SC-GS: Sparse-Controlled Gaussian Splatting for Editable Dynamic Scenes](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.14937/) (2023)
- [Neural Point-Based Graphics](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1906.08240/) (2019)
- [Single-View View Synthesis with Multiplane Images](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2004.11364/) (2020)
- [Triplane Meets Gaussian Splatting: Fast and Generalizable Single-View 3D Reconstruction with Transformers](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.09147/) (2023)
- [DeepView: View Synthesis with Learned Gradient Descent](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1906.07316/) (2019)
- [Free View Synthesis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2008.05511/) (2020)
- [NeX: Real-time View Synthesis with Neural Basis Expansion](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.05606/) (2021)
- [Pushing the Boundaries of View Extrapolation with Multiplane Images](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1905.00413/) (2019)
- [Stable View Synthesis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2011.07233/) (2020)
- [High-quality Surface Reconstruction using Gaussian Surfels](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.17774/) (2024)
- [ARF: Artistic Radiance Fields](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2206.06360/) (2022)
- [Relightable 3D Gaussians: Realistic Point Cloud Relighting with BRDF Decomposition and Ray Tracing](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.16043/) (2023)

## Built on by (most cited first, 17 of 17)

- [Triangle Splatting for Real-Time Radiance Field Rendering](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.19175/) (2025)
- [Neural Shell Texture Splatting: More Details and Fewer Primitives](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2507.20200/) (2025)
- [Radiance Meshes for Volumetric Reconstruction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2512.04076/) (2025)
- [Triangle Splatting+: Differentiable Rendering with Opaque Triangles](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2509.25122/) (2025)
- [Universal Beta Splatting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2510.03312/) (2025)
- [Depth Peeling for High-Fidelity Gaussian-Enhanced Surfel Rendering](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2605.25345/) (2026)
- [A2TG: Adaptive Anisotropic Textured Gaussians for Efficient 3D Scene Representation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2601.09243/) (2026)
- [Fourier Splatting: Generalized Fourier encoded primitives for scalable radiance fields](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.19834/) (2026)
- [3D Skew Gaussian Splatting with Any Camera Trajectory Visualization Engine](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2605.18334/) (2026)
- [A Mixed-Primitive-based Gaussian Splatting Method for Surface Reconstruction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2507.11321/) (2025)
- [From ex(p) to poly: Gaussian Splatting with Polynomial Kernels](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.18707/) (2026)
- [Softmax-GS: Generalized Gaussians Learning When to Blend or Bound](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2604.27437/) (2026)
- [3DGS3: Joint Super Sampling and Frame Interpolation for Real-Time Large-Scale 3DGS Rendering](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2605.11489/) (2026)
- [FLAT: Feedforward Latent Triangle Splatting for Geometrically Accurate Scene Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2606.24876/) (2026)
- [Resonant Brane Splatting for Arbitrary-Scale Super-Resolution](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2606.29453/) (2026)
- [Deformable Triangle Splatting: Flexible Primitives for Real-Time Radiance Field Rendering](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2607.22446/) (2026)
- [Ultra-fast Neural Inference for Stochastic Gaussian Splatting Denoising](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2609.25604/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Recently, Gaussian splatting has emerged as a robust technique for representing 3D scenes, enabling real-time rasterization and high-fidelity rendering. However, Gaussians' inherent radial symmetry and smoothness constraints limit their ability to represent complex shapes, often requiring thousands of primitives to approximate detailed geometry. We introduce Deformable Radial Kernel (DRK), which extends Gaussian splatting into a more general and flexible framework. Through learnable radial bases with adjustable angles and scales, DRK efficiently models diverse shape primitives while enabling precise control over edge sharpness and boundary curvature. iven DRK's planar nature, we further develop accurate ray-primitive intersection computation for depth sorting and introduce efficient kernel culling strategies for improved rasterization efficiency. Extensive experiments demonstrate that DRK outperforms existing methods in both representation efficiency and rendering quality, achieving state-of-the-art performance while dramatically reducing primitive count.