# Neural Shell Texture Splatting: More Details and Fewer Primitives

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2507.20200 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2507.20200/

## Key facts

- Cited by 14 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 34 of its 54 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 27 Jul 2025.

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

- [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)
- [2D Gaussian Splatting for Geometrically Accurate Radiance Fields](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.17888/) (2024)
- [Direct Voxel Grid Optimization: Super-fast Convergence for Radiance Fields Reconstruction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2111.11215/) (2021)
- [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)
- [Mip-Splatting: Alias-free 3D Gaussian Splatting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.16493/) (2023)
- [Ref-NeRF: Structured View-Dependent Appearance for Neural Radiance Fields](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2112.03907/) (2021)
- [Neuralangelo: High-Fidelity Neural Surface Reconstruction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2306.03092/) (2023)
- [Mega-NeRF: Scalable Construction of Large-Scale NeRFs for Virtual Fly-Throughs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2112.10703/) (2021)
- [Compact 3D Gaussian Representation for Radiance Field](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.13681/) (2023)
- [HAC: Hash-grid Assisted Context for 3D Gaussian Splatting Compression](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.14530/) (2024)
- [Taming 3DGS: High-Quality Radiance Fields with Limited Resources](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.15643/) (2024)
- [CompGS: Smaller and Faster Gaussian Splatting with Vector Quantization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.18159/) (2023)
- [Pixel-GS: Density Control with Pixel-aware Gradient for 3D Gaussian Splatting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.15530/) (2024)
- [NeuTex: Neural Texture Mapping for Volumetric Neural Rendering](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.00762/) (2021)
- [Adaptive Shells for Efficient Neural Radiance Field Rendering](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.10091/) (2023)
- [Learning a Neural 3D Texture Space from 2D Exemplars](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1912.04158/) (2019)
- [Texture-GS: Disentangling the Geometry and Texture for 3D Gaussian Splatting Editing](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.10050/) (2024)
- [DeferredGS: Decoupled and Editable Gaussian Splatting with Deferred Shading](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.09412/) (2024)
- [Textured Gaussians for Enhanced 3D Scene Appearance Modeling](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2411.18625/) (2024)
- [GStex: Per-Primitive Texturing of 2D Gaussian Splatting for Decoupled Appearance and Geometry Modeling](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2409.12954/) (2024)
- [Ref-GS: Directional Factorization for 2D Gaussian Splatting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2412.00905/) (2024)
- [BillBoard Splatting (BBSplat): Learnable Textured Primitives for Novel View Synthesis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2411.08508/) (2024)
- [Deep Surface Light Fields](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1810.06514/) (2018)
- [Compact Neural Graphics Primitives with Learned Hash Probing](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.17241/) (2023)

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

- [ConeGS: Error-Guided Densification Using Pixel Cones for Improved Reconstruction With Fewer Primitives](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2511.06810/) (2025)
- [Nexels: Neurally-Textured Surfels for Real-Time Novel View Synthesis with Sparse Geometries](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2512.13796/) (2025)
- [Neural Harmonic Textures for High-Quality Primitive Based Neural Reconstruction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2604.01204/) (2026)
- [Neural Gabor Splatting: Enhanced Gaussian Splatting with Neural Gabor for High-frequency Surface Reconstruction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2604.15941/) (2026)
- [Depth Peeling for High-Fidelity Gaussian-Enhanced Surfel Rendering](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2605.25345/) (2026)
- [Neural Texture Splatting: Expressive 3D Gaussian Splatting for View Synthesis, Geometry, and Dynamic Reconstruction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2511.18873/) (2025)
- [FACT-GS: Frequency-Aligned Complexity-Aware Texture Reparameterization for 2D Gaussian Splatting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2511.23292/) (2025)
- [Hybrid Latents: Geometry-Appearance-Aware Surfel Splatting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2604.14928/) (2026)
- [Heat Kernel Textures: the Geodesic Gaussians That Do Not Splat](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2609.07557/) (2026)
- [Learning View-Dependent Splatting Kernels](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2605.25426/) (2026)
- [Rectifying Mask via Entropy for Distractor-Free 3DGS in Ambiguous Scenarios](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2606.29496/) (2026)
- [Bake It Till You Make It: Ultrafast Spatial Texture-Atlas Splatting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2607.13808/) (2026)
- [PointGT: Simultaneous Geometry and Texture Editing for Point-Based Representations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2609.03341/) (2026)
- [P-CORE: Self-Supervised Surface Consistency for Point-Based Neural Editing](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2609.03349/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Gaussian splatting techniques have shown promising results in novel view synthesis, achieving high fidelity and efficiency. However, their high reconstruction quality comes at the cost of requiring a large number of primitives. We identify this issue as stemming from the entanglement of geometry and appearance in Gaussian Splatting. To address this, we introduce a neural shell texture, a global representation that encodes texture information around the surface. We use Gaussian primitives as both a geometric representation and texture field samplers, efficiently splatting texture features into image space. Our evaluation demonstrates that this disentanglement enables high parameter efficiency, fine texture detail reconstruction, and easy textured mesh extraction, all while using significantly fewer primitives.