# EAG-PT: Emission-Aware Gaussians and Path Tracing for Diffuse Indoor Scene Reconstruction and Editing

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2601.23065 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2601.23065/

## Key facts

- Cited by 1 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 43 of its 81 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 30 Jan 2026.

## Builds on (most cited first, 30 of 43)

- [The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Deep Features as a Perceptual Metric](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1801.03924/) (2018)
- [Segment Anything](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2304.02643/) (2023)
- [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)
- [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)
- [Grounded SAM: Assembling Open-World Models for Diverse Visual Tasks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2401.14159/) (2024)
- [The Replica Dataset: A Digital Replica of Indoor Spaces](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1906.05797/) (2019)
- [MonoSDF: Exploring Monocular Geometric Cues for Neural Implicit Surface Reconstruction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2206.00665/) (2022)
- [GaussianShader: 3D Gaussian Splatting with Shading Functions for Reflective Surfaces](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.17977/) (2023)
- [AnySplat: Feed-forward 3D Gaussian Splatting from Unconstrained Views](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.23716/) (2025)
- [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)
- [GS-IR: 3D Gaussian Splatting for Inverse Rendering](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.16473/) (2023)
- [Shape, Light, and Material Decomposition from Images using Monte Carlo Rendering and Denoising](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2206.03380/) (2022)
- [StableNormal: Reducing Diffusion Variance for Stable and Sharp Normal](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.16864/) (2024)
- [Relightable 3D Gaussians: Realistic Point Cloud Relighting with BRDF Decomposition and Ray Tracing](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.16043/) (2023)
- [3D Gaussian Ray Tracing: Fast Tracing of Particle Scenes](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.07090/) (2024)
- [NeRFactor: Neural Factorization of Shape and Reflectance Under an Unknown Illumination](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2106.01970/) (2021)
- [Real-time Neural Radiance Caching for Path Tracing](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2106.12372/) (2021)
- [VR-NeRF: High-Fidelity Virtualized Walkable Spaces](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.02542/) (2023)
- [IRGS: Inter-Reflective Gaussian Splatting with 2D Gaussian Ray Tracing](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2412.15867/) (2024)
- [Free-viewpoint Indoor Neural Relighting from Multi-view Stereo](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2106.13299/) (2021)
- [I2-SDF: Intrinsic Indoor Scene Reconstruction and Editing via Raytracing in Neural SDFs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.07634/) (2023)
- [LightLab: Controlling Light Sources in Images with Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.09608/) (2025)
- [Don't Splat your Gaussians: Volumetric Ray-Traced Primitives for Modeling and Rendering Scattering and Emissive Media](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2405.15425/) (2024)
- [EnvGS: Modeling View-Dependent Appearance with Environment Gaussian](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2412.15215/) (2024)
- [SpecNeRF: Gaussian Directional Encoding for Specular Reflections](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.13102/) (2023)
- [ObjectGS: Object-aware Scene Reconstruction and Scene Understanding via Gaussian Splatting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2507.15454/) (2025)

## Built on by (most cited first, 1 of 1)

- [LightFuse: Relightable Interactive Gaussian Scene Reconstruction via Multi-Scan Fusion and 2D Gaussian Ray Tracing](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2608.29269/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Recent radiance-field-based reconstruction methods, such as NeRF and 3DGS, achieve high visual fidelity for indoor scenes, but often break down under scene editing due to baked illumination and the lack of explicit light transport. In contrast, inverse path tracing methods based on mesh representations enforce correct light transport but require highly accurate geometry, making them difficult to apply robustly to real indoor scenes. We present Emission-Aware Gaussians and Path Tracing (EAG-PT), a method for physically based reconstruction and rendering of indoor scenes using a unified 2D Gaussian representation, targeting editable diffuse global illumination. Our approach consists of three key ideas: (1) representing indoor scenes with 2D Gaussians as a transport-friendly geometric proxy that avoids explicit mesh reconstruction; (2) explicitly separating emissive and non-emissive components during reconstruction to support editing; and (3) decoupling reconstruction from final rendering by using efficient single-bounce optimization and high-quality multi-bounce path tracing, respectively. Experiments on synthetic and real indoor scenes show that EAG-PT produces more natural and physically consistent edited renderings than radiance-field reconstructions, while preserving finer geometric detail and avoiding mesh-induced artifacts compared with mesh-based inverse path tracing. These results highlight the potential of our approach for applications such as interior design, XR content creation, and embodied AI.