# HaloGS: Loose Coupling of Compact Geometry and Gaussian Splats for 3D Scenes

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2505.20267 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.20267/

## Key facts

- Cited by 6 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 33 of its 45 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 26 May 2025.

## Builds on (most cited first, 30 of 33)

- [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)
- [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)
- [Depth Anything V2](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.09414/) (2024)
- [2D Gaussian Splatting for Geometrically Accurate Radiance Fields](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.17888/) (2024)
- [ScanNet++: A High-Fidelity Dataset of 3D Indoor Scenes](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2308.11417/) (2023)
- [Scaffold-GS: Structured 3D Gaussians for View-Adaptive Rendering](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.00109/) (2023)
- [Zip-NeRF: Anti-Aliased Grid-Based Neural Radiance Fields](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2304.06706/) (2023)
- [SuGaR: Surface-Aligned Gaussian Splatting for Efficient 3D Mesh Reconstruction and High-Quality Mesh Rendering](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.12775/) (2023)
- [Point-NeRF: Point-based Neural Radiance Fields](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2201.08845/) (2022)
- [Neuralangelo: High-Fidelity Neural Surface Reconstruction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2306.03092/) (2023)
- [NeuS2: Fast Learning of Neural Implicit Surfaces for Multi-view Reconstruction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2212.05231/) (2022)
- [Gaussian Opacity Fields: Efficient Adaptive Surface Reconstruction in Unbounded Scenes](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.10772/) (2024)
- [Octree-GS: Towards Consistent Real-time Rendering with LOD-Structured 3D Gaussians](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.17898/) (2024)
- [A Hierarchical 3D Gaussian Representation for Real-Time Rendering of Very Large Datasets](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.12080/) (2024)
- [BSP-Net: Generating Compact Meshes via Binary Space Partitioning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1911.06971/) (2019)
- [CityGaussian: Real-time High-quality Large-Scale Scene Rendering with Gaussians](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.01133/) (2024)
- [MatrixCity: A Large-scale City Dataset for City-scale Neural Rendering and Beyond](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2309.16553/) (2023)
- [StableNormal: Reducing Diffusion Variance for Stable and Sharp Normal](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.16864/) (2024)
- [Grid-guided Neural Radiance Fields for Large Urban Scenes](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.14001/) (2023)
- [ParSeNet: A Parametric Surface Fitting Network for 3D Point Clouds](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2003.12181/) (2020)
- [Supervised Fitting of Geometric Primitives to 3D Point Clouds](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1811.08988/) (2018)
- [VR-NeRF: High-Fidelity Virtualized Walkable Spaces](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.02542/) (2023)
- [3DGSR: Implicit Surface Reconstruction with 3D Gaussian Splatting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.00409/) (2024)
- [PermutoSDF: Fast Multi-View Reconstruction with Implicit Surfaces using Permutohedral Lattices](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2211.12562/) (2022)
- [3D Convex Splatting: Radiance Field Rendering with 3D Smooth Convexes](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2411.14974/) (2024)
- [FAST-LIVO2: Fast, Direct LiDAR-Inertial-Visual Odometry](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2408.14035/) (2024)

## Built on by (most cited first, 6 of 6)

- [Triangle Splatting+: Differentiable Rendering with Opaque Triangles](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2509.25122/) (2025)
- [PLANING: A Loosely Coupled Triangle-Gaussian Framework for Streaming 3D Reconstruction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2601.22046/) (2026)
- [Radiant Triangle Soup with Soft Connectivity Forces for 3D Reconstruction and Novel View Synthesis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.23642/) (2025)
- [MetroGS: Efficient and Stable Reconstruction of Geometrically Accurate High-Fidelity Large-Scale Scenes](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2511.19172/) (2025)
- [Fast and Compact 3D Gaussian Splatting with Polarized Opacity Prior](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2608.22344/) (2026)
- [STARS-GS: Structure-Aware Regularized Gaussian Splatting for Large-Scale Aerial Surface Reconstruction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2609.03447/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

High fidelity 3D reconstruction and rendering hinge on capturing precise geometry while preserving photo realistic detail. Most existing methods either fuse these goals into a single cumbersome model or adopt hybrid schemes whose uniform primitives lead to a trade off between efficiency and fidelity. In this paper, we introduce HaloGS, a dual representation that loosely couples coarse triangles for geometry with Gaussian primitives for appearance, motivated by the lightweight classic geometry representations and their proven efficiency in real world applications. Our design yields a compact yet expressive model capable of photo realistic rendering across both indoor and outdoor environments, seamlessly adapting to varying levels of scene complexity. Experiments on multiple benchmark datasets demonstrate that our method yields both compact, accurate geometry and high fidelity renderings, especially in challenging scenarios where robust geometric structure make a clear difference.