# Nexels: Neurally-Textured Surfels for Real-Time Novel View Synthesis with Sparse Geometries

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2512.13796 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2512.13796/

## Key facts

- Cited by 4 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 45 of its 59 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 15 Dec 2025.

## Builds on (most cited first, 30 of 45)

- [PyTorch: An Imperative Style, High-Performance Deep Learning Library](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1912.01703/) (2019)
- [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)
- [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)
- [TensoRF: Tensorial Radiance Fields](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2203.09517/) (2022)
- [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)
- [PlenOctrees for Real-time Rendering of Neural Radiance Fields](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.14024/) (2021)
- [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)
- [HexPlane: A Fast Representation for Dynamic Scenes](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2301.09632/) (2023)
- [Point-NeRF: Point-based Neural Radiance Fields](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2201.08845/) (2022)
- [Modular Primitives for High-Performance Differentiable Rendering](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2011.03277/) (2020)
- [Neural Geometric Level of Detail: Real-time Rendering with Implicit 3D Shapes](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2101.10994/) (2021)
- [Soft Rasterizer: A Differentiable Renderer for Image-based 3D Reasoning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1904.01786/) (2019)
- [Octree-GS: Towards Consistent Real-time Rendering with LOD-Structured 3D Gaussians](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.17898/) (2024)
- [BakedSDF: Meshing Neural SDFs for Real-Time View Synthesis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2302.14859/) (2023)
- [3D Gaussian Splatting as Markov Chain Monte Carlo](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.09591/) (2024)
- [Mini-Splatting: Representing Scenes with a Constrained Number of Gaussians](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.14166/) (2024)
- [3D Gaussian Ray Tracing: Fast Tracing of Particle Scenes](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.07090/) (2024)
- [Revising Densification in Gaussian Splatting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.06109/) (2024)
- [GES: Generalized Exponential Splatting for Efficient Radiance Field Rendering](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2402.10128/) (2024)
- [Neural Fields meet Explicit Geometric Representation for Inverse Rendering of Urban Scenes](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2304.03266/) (2023)
- [NerfAcc: Efficient Sampling Accelerates NeRFs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.04966/) (2023)
- [Adaptive Shells for Efficient Neural Radiance Field Rendering](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.10091/) (2023)
- [NeuRBF: A Neural Fields Representation with Adaptive Radial Basis Functions](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2309.15426/) (2023)
- [3D Convex Splatting: Radiance Field Rendering with 3D Smooth Convexes](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2411.14974/) (2024)

## Built on by (most cited first, 4 of 4)

- [Bake It Till You Make It: Ultrafast Spatial Texture-Atlas Splatting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2607.13808/) (2026)
- [Floating Radiance Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2608.05920/) (2026)
- [NRF-GS: Neural Residual Fields for Expressive and Compact Gaussian Splatting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2609.37115/) (2026)
- [SCION: Scene Composition with Instanced Neural Primitives](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2610.02322/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Though Gaussian splatting has achieved impressive results in novel view synthesis, it requires millions of primitives to model highly textured scenes, even when the geometry of the scene is simple. We propose a representation that goes beyond point-based rendering and decouples geometry and appearance in order to achieve a compact representation. We use surfels for geometry and a combination of a global neural field and per-primitive colours for appearance. The neural field textures a fixed number of primitives for each pixel, ensuring that the added compute is low. Our representation matches the perceptual quality of 3D Gaussian splatting while using 9.7× fewer primitives and 5.5× less memory on outdoor scenes and using 31× fewer primitives and 3.7× less memory on indoor scenes. Our representation also renders twice as fast as existing textured primitives while improving upon their visual quality.