# Ilov3Splat: Instance-Level Open-Vocabulary 3D Scene Understanding in Gaussian Splatting

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2605.04506 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2605.04506/

## Key facts

- No citing papers in the map yet (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 29 of its 31 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 6 May 2026.

## Builds on (most cited first, 29 of 29)

- [Learning Transferable Visual Models From Natural Language Supervision](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.00020/) (2021)
- [Segment Anything](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2304.02643/) (2023)
- [Emerging Properties in Self-Supervised Vision Transformers](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2104.14294/) (2021)
- [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)
- [ScanNet: Richly-annotated 3D Reconstructions of Indoor Scenes](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1702.04405/) (2017)
- [Language-driven Semantic Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2201.03546/) (2022)
- [Nerfstudio: A Modular Framework for Neural Radiance Field Development](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2302.04264/) (2023)
- [LERF: Language Embedded Radiance Fields](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.09553/) (2023)
- [PointCLIP: Point Cloud Understanding by CLIP](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2112.02413/) (2021)
- [In-Place Scene Labelling and Understanding with Implicit Scene Representation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.15875/) (2021)
- [LangSplat: 3D Language Gaussian Splatting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.16084/) (2023)
- [Gaussian Grouping: Segment and Edit Anything in 3D Scenes](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.00732/) (2023)
- [Decomposing NeRF for Editing via Feature Field Distillation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2205.15585/) (2022)
- [Feature 3DGS: Supercharging 3D Gaussian Splatting to Enable Distilled Feature Fields](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.03203/) (2023)
- [Language Embedded 3D Gaussians for Open-Vocabulary Scene Understanding](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.18482/) (2023)
- [SAM3D: Segment Anything in 3D Scenes](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2306.03908/) (2023)
- [OpenGaussian: Towards Point-Level 3D Gaussian-based Open Vocabulary Understanding](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.02058/) (2024)
- [Weakly Supervised 3D Open-vocabulary Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.14093/) (2023)
- [GARField: Group Anything with Radiance Fields](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2401.09419/) (2024)
- [FMGS: Foundation Model Embedded 3D Gaussian Splatting for Holistic 3D Scene Understanding](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2401.01970/) (2024)
- [Machine Learning in Python: Main developments and technology trends in data science, machine learning, and artificial intelligence](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2002.04803/) (2020)
- [PointMixer: MLP-Mixer for Point Cloud Understanding](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2111.11187/) (2021)
- [Click-Gaussian: Interactive Segmentation to Any 3D Gaussians](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.11793/) (2024)
- [Dr. Splat: Directly Referring 3D Gaussian Splatting via Direct Language Embedding Registration](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2502.16652/) (2025)
- [FastLGS: Speeding up Language Embedded Gaussians with Feature Grid Mapping](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.01916/) (2024)
- [WildScenes: A Benchmark for 2D and 3D Semantic Segmentation in Large-scale Natural Environments](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.15364/) (2023)
- [TULIP: Transformer for Upsampling of LiDAR Point Clouds](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.06733/) (2023)
- [Reg-NF: Efficient Registration of Implicit Surfaces within Neural Fields](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2402.09722/) (2024)

## Abstract (arXiv)

We introduce Ilov3Splat, a novel framework for instance-level open-vocabulary 3D scene understanding built on 3D Gaussian Splatting (3D-GS). Most prior work depends on 2D rendering-based matching or point-level semantic association, which undermines cross-view consistency, lacks coherent instance-level reasoning, and limits precision in downstream 3D tasks. To address these limitations, our method jointly optimizes scene geometry and semantic representations by augmenting Gaussian splats with view-consistent feature fields. Specifically, we leverage multi-resolution hash embedding to efficiently encode language-aligned CLIP features, enabling dense and coherent language grounding in 3D space. We further train an instance feature field using contrastive loss over SAM masks, supporting fine-grained object distinction across views. At inference time, CLIP-encoded queries are matched against the learned features, followed by two-stage 3D clustering to retrieve relevant Gaussian groups. This enables our framework to identify arbitrary objects in 3D scenes based on natural language descriptions, without requiring category supervision or manual annotations. Experiments on standard benchmarks demonstrate that Ilov3Splat outperforms prior open-vocabulary 3D-GS methods in both object selection and instance segmentation, offering a flexible and accurate solution for language-driven 3D scene understanding. Project page: https://csiro-robotics.github.io/Ilov3Splat.