# GaRe: Relightable 3D Gaussian Splatting for Outdoor Scenes from Unconstrained Photo Collections

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2507.20512 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2507.20512/

## Key facts

- Cited by 11 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 27 of its 57 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 28 Jul 2025.

## Builds on (most cited first, 27 of 27)

- [3D Gaussian Splatting for Real-Time Radiance Field Rendering](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2308.04079/) (2023)
- [Mip-NeRF: A Multiscale Representation for Anti-Aliasing Neural Radiance Fields](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.13415/) (2021)
- [Depth Anything V2](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.09414/) (2024)
- [NeRF in the Wild: Neural Radiance Fields for Unconstrained Photo Collections](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2008.02268/) (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)
- [NeRV: Neural Reflectance and Visibility Fields for Relighting and View Synthesis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2012.03927/) (2020)
- [NeRD: Neural Reflectance Decomposition from Image Collections](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2012.03918/) (2020)
- [GaussianShader: 3D Gaussian Splatting with Shading Functions for Reflective Surfaces](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.17977/) (2023)
- [GS-IR: 3D Gaussian Splatting for Inverse Rendering](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.16473/) (2023)
- [Inverse Rendering for Complex Indoor Scenes: Shape, Spatially-Varying Lighting and SVBRDF from a Single Image](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1905.02722/) (2019)
- [Modeling Indirect Illumination for Inverse Rendering](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2204.06837/) (2022)
- [TensoIR: Tensorial Inverse Rendering](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2304.12461/) (2023)
- [WildGaussians: 3D Gaussian Splatting in the Wild](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.08447/) (2024)
- [Hallucinated Neural Radiance Fields in the Wild](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2111.15246/) (2021)
- [NeRFReN: Neural Radiance Fields with Reflections](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2111.15234/) (2021)
- [Gaussian in the Wild: 3D Gaussian Splatting for Unconstrained Image Collections](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.15704/) (2024)
- [NeRF for Outdoor Scene Relighting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2112.05140/) (2021)
- [GIR: 3D Gaussian Inverse Rendering for Relightable Scene Factorization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.05133/) (2023)
- [SWAG: Splatting in the Wild images with Appearance-conditioned Gaussians](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.10427/) (2024)
- [IntrinsicNeRF: Learning Intrinsic Neural Radiance Fields for Editable Novel View Synthesis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2210.00647/) (2022)
- [GS^3: Efficient Relighting with Triple Gaussian Splatting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.11419/) (2024)
- [ReLight My NeRF: A Dataset for Novel View Synthesis and Relighting of Real World Objects](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2304.10448/) (2023)
- [Relighting Neural Radiance Fields with Shadow and Highlight Hints](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2308.13404/) (2023)
- [OutCast: Outdoor Single-image Relighting with Cast Shadows](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2204.09341/) (2022)
- [Multi-view Inverse Rendering for Large-scale Real-world Indoor Scenes](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2211.10206/) (2022)
- [Procedural Modeling and Physically Based Rendering for Synthetic Data Generation in Automotive Applications](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1710.06270/) (2017)

## Built on by (most cited first, 11 of 11)

- [LuxRemix: Lighting Decomposition and Remixing for Indoor Scenes](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2601.15283/) (2026)
- [ROSGS: Relightable Outdoor Scenes With Gaussian Splatting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2509.11275/) (2025)
- [EAG-PT: Emission-Aware Gaussians and Path Tracing for Diffuse Indoor Scene Reconstruction and Editing](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2601.23065/) (2026)
- [R3GW: Relightable 3D Gaussians for Outdoor Scenes in the Wild](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.02801/) (2026)
- [SRUG: Shadow-Guided Relightable Urban Scene with Generation Model](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2605.24700/) (2026)
- [TRON: Tracing Rays to Orchestrate a Neural Renderer for 3D Gaussian Reconstructions](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2606.11314/) (2026)
- [BRDFusion: Physics Meets Generation for Urban Scene Inverse Rendering](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2606.17049/) (2026)
- [From Sparse and Imperfect 2D Anchors to Consistent 3D Gaussian Street Scenes: Support-Aware Appearance](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2606.26007/) (2026)
- [DANTE-W: Diffuse Albedo Neural Texturing in the Wild](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2606.30677/) (2026)
- [Intrinsic decomposition and editing of 3D Gaussian splats](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2606.31637/) (2026)
- [LightBridge: Feed-Forward Generative Relighting for 3D Gaussian Splatting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2609.02543/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

We propose a 3D Gaussian splatting-based framework for outdoor relighting that leverages intrinsic image decomposition to precisely integrate sunlight, sky radiance, and indirect lighting from unconstrained photo collections. Unlike prior methods that compress the per-image global illumination into a single latent vector, our approach enables simultaneously diverse shading manipulation and the generation of dynamic shadow effects. This is achieved through three key innovations: (1) a residual-based sun visibility extraction method to accurately separate direct sunlight effects, (2) a region-based supervision framework with a structural consistency loss for physically interpretable and coherent illumination decomposition, and (3) a ray-tracing-based technique for realistic shadow simulation. Extensive experiments demonstrate that our framework synthesizes novel views with competitive fidelity against state-of-the-art relighting solutions and produces more natural and multifaceted illumination and shadow effects.