# 3D Student Splatting and Scooping

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2503.10148 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.10148/

## Key facts

- Cited by 14 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 30 of its 43 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 13 Mar 2025.

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

- [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)
- [DreamFusion: Text-to-3D using 2D Diffusion](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2209.14988/) (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)
- [Zero-1-to-3: Zero-shot One Image to 3D Object](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.11328/) (2023)
- [D-NeRF: Neural Radiance Fields for Dynamic Scenes](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2011.13961/) (2020)
- [4D Gaussian Splatting for Real-Time Dynamic Scene Rendering](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2310.08528/) (2023)
- [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)
- [Scaffold-GS: Structured 3D Gaussians for View-Adaptive Rendering](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.00109/) (2023)
- [Mip-Splatting: Alias-free 3D Gaussian Splatting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.16493/) (2023)
- [Baking Neural Radiance Fields for Real-Time View Synthesis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.14645/) (2021)
- [Compact 3D Gaussian Representation for Radiance Field](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.13681/) (2023)
- [Stochastic Gradient Hamiltonian Monte Carlo](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1402.4102/) (2014)
- [MobileNeRF: Exploiting the Polygon Rasterization Pipeline for Efficient Neural Field Rendering on Mobile Architectures](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2208.00277/) (2022)
- [A Survey on 3D Gaussian Splatting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2401.03890/) (2024)
- [3D Gaussian Splatting as Markov Chain Monte Carlo](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.09591/) (2024)
- [WildGaussians: 3D Gaussian Splatting in the Wild](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.08447/) (2024)
- [Revising Densification in Gaussian Splatting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.06109/) (2024)
- [FreGS: 3D Gaussian Splatting with Progressive Frequency Regularization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.06908/) (2024)
- [GES: Generalized Exponential Splatting for Efficient Radiance Field Rendering](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2402.10128/) (2024)
- [3D-HGS: 3D Half-Gaussian Splatting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.02720/) (2024)
- [Subtractive Mixture Models via Squaring: Representation and Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2310.00724/) (2023)
- [Implicit Gaussian Splatting with Efficient Multi-Level Tri-Plane Representation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2408.10041/) (2024)
- [F-3DGS: Factorized Coordinates and Representations for 3D Gaussian Splatting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2405.17083/) (2024)

## Built on by (most cited first, 14 of 14)

- [VGD: Visual Geometry Gaussian Splatting for Feed-Forward Surround-view Driving Reconstruction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2510.19578/) (2025)
- [NeAR: Coupled Neural Asset-Renderer Stack](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2511.18600/) (2025)
- [Universal Beta Splatting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2510.03312/) (2025)
- [Prune Wisely, Reconstruct Sharply: Compact 3D Gaussian Splatting via Adaptive Pruning and Difference-of-Gaussian Primitives](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2602.24136/) (2026)
- [When Identities Collapse: A Stress-Test Benchmark for Multi-Subject Personalization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.26078/) (2026)
- [Depth Peeling for High-Fidelity Gaussian-Enhanced Surfel Rendering](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2605.25345/) (2026)
- [AgriChrono: A Multi-modal Dataset Capturing Crop Growth and Lighting Variability with a Field Robot](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2508.18694/) (2025)
- [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)
- [A Step to Decouple Optimization in 3DGS](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2601.16736/) (2026)
- [Softmax-GS: Generalized Gaussians Learning When to Blend or Bound](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2604.27437/) (2026)
- [Denoising-GS: Gaussian Splatting with Spatial-aware Denoising](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2605.14880/) (2026)
- [3D Skew-Normal Splatting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2605.15010/) (2026)
- [NRF-GS: Neural Residual Fields for Expressive and Compact Gaussian Splatting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2609.37115/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Recently, 3D Gaussian Splatting (3DGS) provides a new framework for novel view synthesis, and has spiked a new wave of research in neural rendering and related applications. As 3DGS is becoming a foundational component of many models, any improvement on 3DGS itself can bring huge benefits. To this end, we aim to improve the fundamental paradigm and formulation of 3DGS. We argue that as an unnormalized mixture model, it needs to be neither Gaussians nor splatting. We subsequently propose a new mixture model consisting of flexible Student's t distributions, with both positive (splatting) and negative (scooping) densities. We name our model Student Splatting and Scooping, or SSS. When providing better expressivity, SSS also poses new challenges in learning. Therefore, we also propose a new principled sampling approach for optimization. Through exhaustive evaluation and comparison, across multiple datasets, settings, and metrics, we demonstrate that SSS outperforms existing methods in terms of quality and parameter efficiency, e.g. achieving matching or better quality with similar numbers of components, and obtaining comparable results while reducing the component number by as much as 82%.