# Spec-Gloss Surfels and Normal-Diffuse Priors for Relightable Glossy Objects

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2510.02069 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2510.02069/

## Key facts

- No citing papers in the map yet (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 25 of its 40 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 2 Oct 2025.

## Builds on (most cited first, 25 of 25)

- [3D Gaussian Splatting for Real-Time Radiance Field Rendering](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2308.04079/) (2023)
- [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)
- [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)
- [Ref-NeRF: Structured View-Dependent Appearance for Neural Radiance Fields](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2112.03907/) (2021)
- [NeRV: Neural Reflectance and Visibility Fields for Relighting and View Synthesis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2012.03927/) (2020)
- [Modular Primitives for High-Performance Differentiable Rendering](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2011.03277/) (2020)
- [PhySG: Inverse Rendering with Spherical Gaussians for Physics-based Material Editing and Relighting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2104.00674/) (2021)
- [GaussianShader: 3D Gaussian Splatting with Shading Functions for Reflective Surfaces](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.17977/) (2023)
- [NeRO: Neural Geometry and BRDF Reconstruction of Reflective Objects from Multiview Images](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.17398/) (2023)
- [StableNormal: Reducing Diffusion Variance for Stable and Sharp Normal](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.16864/) (2024)
- [NeRFactor: Neural Factorization of Shape and Reflectance Under an Unknown Illumination](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2106.01970/) (2021)
- [Ref-NeuS: Ambiguity-Reduced Neural Implicit Surface Learning for Multi-View Reconstruction with Reflection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.10840/) (2023)
- [ENVIDR: Implicit Differentiable Renderer with Neural Environment Lighting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.13022/) (2023)
- [3D Gaussian Splatting with Deferred Reflection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.18454/) (2024)
- [Reflective Gaussian Splatting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2412.19282/) (2024)
- [Ref-GS: Directional Factorization for 2D Gaussian Splatting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2412.00905/) (2024)
- [Objects With Lighting: A Real-World Dataset for Evaluating Reconstruction and Rendering for Object Relighting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2401.09126/) (2024)
- [Factored-NeuS: Reconstructing Surfaces, Illumination, and Materials of Possibly Glossy Objects](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.17929/) (2023)
- [ReCap: Better Gaussian Relighting with Cross-Environment Captures](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2412.07534/) (2024)
- [GS-2DGS: Geometrically Supervised 2DGS for Reflective Object Reconstruction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2506.13110/) (2025)
- [Unveiling the Ambiguity in Neural Inverse Rendering: A Parameter Compensation Analysis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.12819/) (2024)
- [RGS-DR: Deferred Reflections and Residual Shading in 2D Gaussian Splatting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2504.18468/) (2025)
- [Ref-DVGO: Reflection-Aware Direct Voxel Grid Optimization for an Improved Quality-Efficiency Trade-Off in Reflective Scene Reconstruction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2308.08530/) (2023)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Accurate reconstruction and relighting of glossy objects remains a longstanding challenge, as object shape, material properties, and illumination are inherently difficult to disentangle. Existing neural rendering approaches often rely on simplified BRDF models or parameterizations that couple diffuse and specular components, which restrict faithful material recovery and limit relighting fidelity. We propose a relightable framework that integrates a microfacet BRDF with the specular-glossiness parameterization into 2D Gaussian Splatting with deferred shading. This formulation enables more physically consistent material decomposition, while diffusion-based priors for surface normals and diffuse color guide early-stage optimization and mitigate ambiguity. A coarse-to-fine environment map optimization accelerates convergence, and negative-only environment map clipping preserves high-dynamic-range specular reflections. Extensive experiments on complex, glossy scenes demonstrate that our method achieves high-quality geometry and material reconstruction, delivering substantially more realistic and consistent relighting under novel illumination compared to existing Gaussian splatting methods.