Show HN: Turning a Gaussian Splat into a videogame

https://blog.playcanvas.com/turning-a-gaussian-splat-into-a-videogame/

by yak32 • 3 months ago

236 63 3 months ago

blog.playcanvas.com

sev_verso• 3 months ago

Plays decently smooth on my M4 Max. It's probably still a long way from being a production-ready replacement for meshed environments, but I could imagine a hybrid mode where certain elements like grass and shrubbery are drawn with gaussians, perhaps with support for basic procedural animation. Great work with the playable demo!

yak3217• 3 months ago

Thanks! Yeah hybrid is a way forward, dynamic stuff is not easy

reactordev3• 3 months ago

For me, the biggest issue this solves is the blank canvas paralysis problem. Artists are visual thinkers and need a little nudge in the right (art) direction. This is a great way to fill that blank sheet of paper with something that they can take and run with.

cyber_kinetist2• 3 months ago

Editing Gaussian Splats is still a pain in the ass in the artist's perspective. Even if you can create a good-enough first try using scanned data or generative AI, you just end up with a rough draft that you cannot polish in any way. Existing mesh-based tools allow you to edit the geometry relatively easily, since they are in a higher level discrete representation rather than just a point cloud data structure.

jayd16• 3 months ago

I mean... Just take a source photo and over paint it? Splats don't really get you closer to a workable model than concept art.

cubefox• 3 months ago

but I could imagine a hybrid mode where certain elements like grass and shrubbery are drawn with gaussians

Those tend to move in the wind. Animations don't work well with splats. Or with any data structure except polygon meshes.

Edit:

Responding in the parent because HN says I'm "posting too fast" and should "slow down".

Have you seen https://www.4dv.ai/

Yeah, but this seems to be just a 3D GS video (captured from several different camera angles), similar to how an ordinary 2D video is just a series of still frames. For 3D games this would be unsuitable since animations often have to be generated on the fly based on game physics. Even for pre-baked animations the memory cost of loading each frame individually would be too inefficient. For polygon meshes you have just a single static mesh that is deformed over time.

Dreams managed to animate splats on the PS4. Admittedly, not quite the same type of splats, but there is probably a middle ground here where it can be made to work

I'm pretty sure Dreams only allowed animations as translations and rotations, not something that approximates soft skeletal animations. And even translations and rotations would be problematic since 3D GS scenes rely on baked lighting which would then result in objects no longer fitting the scene.

swiftcoder3• 3 months ago

Animations don't work well with splats

Dreams managed to animate splats on the PS4. Admittedly, not quite the same type of splats, but there is probably a middle ground here where it can be made to work

pants22• 3 months ago

Have you seen https://www.4dv.ai/

jasonjmcghee• 3 months ago

Endless fields of grass and other things where you can make copies of a single base thing and just argue in some parameters like position, color, type etc are cheap to render. Making them sway or react to a body also isn't a problem.

andai• 3 months ago

It runs kinda well on the best computer in the world, yeah? :)

I have another data point: my ten year old ThinkPad. I get about 10 FPS. Lowering the quality doesn't seem to increase performance.

But I am amazed by what I am seeing, and amazed it runs at all!

I think it won't be long before the whole world is mapped, and "playable".

yak3217• 3 months ago

tbh I haven't yet approached optimisation for this, i am pretty sure it's possible to improve it further. It runs on my 2020 iphone, but not super smooth though

avaer• 3 months ago

I think it won't be long before the whole world is mapped, and "playable".

People already don't want to use VR, why would they get into/allow scanning with even less immediate value?

I agree with the sprit though, I just think rendering the world is gonna happen from a few generations of iteration on world modeling tech like World Labs/Marble.

swiftcoder3• 3 months ago

Sort of unfortunate that one ends up putting normal meshed characters that clash with the photorealistic splat environment

DonHopkins• 3 months ago

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27808826

DonHopkins on July 12, 2021 | parent | context | favorite | on: I Stopped Using Emojis

What we saw was, if you go too far in that [representational] direction because you want to be inclusive, people don’t see themselves represented and they’re not going to use it. You have to have enough specificity to represent you enough, but not so inclusive that your emoji palette is hundreds of thousands of emoji.

Scott McCloud wrote a whole book about this: "Understanding Comics".

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Understanding_Comics

One of the book's key concepts is that of "masking," a visual style, dramatic convention, and literary technique described in the chapter on realism. It is the use of simplistic, archetypal, narrative characters, even if juxtaposed with detailed, photographic, verisimilar, spectacular backgrounds. This may function, McCloud infers, as a mask, a form of projective identification. His explanation is that a familiar and minimally detailed character allows for a stronger emotional connection and for viewers to identify more easily.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Masking_(illustration)

The masking effect or masking is a visual style, dramatic convention, and literary technique described by cartoonist Scott McCloud in his book Understanding Comics in the chapter on realism. It is the use of simplistic, archetypal, narrative characters, even if juxtaposed with detailed, photographic, verisimilar, spectacular backgrounds. This may function, McCloud infers, as a mask, a form of projective identification. His explanation is that a familiar and minimally detailed character allows for a stronger emotional connection and for viewers to identify more easily.

Scott McCloud and Will Wright discussed masking and other issues in their 2002 GDC discussion, "When Maps Collide":

https://www.gdcvault.com/play/1022567/When-Maps-Collide-A-Co...

Understanding Comics and masking influenced The Sims 1 graphics architecture and design (using detailed pre-rendered 2d+z sprites for the environment and simplistic real time 3d graphics for the people), which fortunately ran fast on the common un-accelerated 3d graphics hardware of the time (greatly expanding the user base), and synergistically enabled user created content (which was essential to its success) which I described in this earlier post:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3676313

Going 3D at that time in history meant that the quality of the graphic would take a huge hit, as well as the rendering speed, and fewer people would be able to run it because it would require a high end computer, so it was just not worth it.
Using 2D pre-rendered sprites means that the artists can use as many polygons, rich textures and lighting techniques as they want in 3D Studio Max, and tweak them until the sprites look perfect, and that's exactly what the user sees. You just could not approach anywhere near that quality with 3D graphics at the time. Of course things are a lot different now!
That was during the time that The Sims was also in development. One reason The Sims was successful is that it did not try to be full 3D, and ran well on low-end computers (the old computer that little sister inherits from big brother when he upgrades to a gaming machine). It used a hybrid 2D/3D system of z-buffered sprites, with an orthographic projection constrained to four rotations, three zooms, and only the characters were rendered with polygons into the pre-rendered z-buffered scene, using DirectX's software renderer.
I developed the character animation system and content creation tools for The Sims, and when the EA executives were reviewing the technology to decide if they should buy Maxis, to justify our approach I bought them a copy of Scott McCloud's book Understanding Comics, which explained a concept called "masking" --

http://www.themedianinja.com/glenn/legacy/default_links/anim...

Hergé's Tintin comics are a great example of how that works: The idea is that by making the background environment very realistic (i.e. rich pre-rendered sprites from high poly models), and the characters themselves more abstract (i.e. efficient real time 3d texture mapped low poly models), the readers (players) can more easily project themselves into the scene and identify with the characters. Much in the same way an abstract happy face can represent everyone, while a photograph of a person's face only represents that person.
The other fortunate consequence was that it was easy for players to create their own characters and objects by editing the textures and sprites with 2D tools like Photoshop, without requiring difficult 3D modeling tools like 3D Studio Max, so that enabled a lot of user created content by kids instead of professional artists, which was essential to the success of the game.

dnnddidiej• 3 months ago

Probably for the best as, well, they are being pumped with lead.

yak3217• 3 months ago

idealy it should be 4DGS but we are far away from it - real actors scan etc.. but somebody will do it later i am sure

poly2it• 3 months ago

I'm looking forward to seeing what will happen when gaussian splatting can be combined with DLSS 5. Gaussian splatting has a lot of potential in video games yet to be realised.

halflife2• 3 months ago

I’m trying to understand from the video why this is better, it looks like a normal high resolution textures with precooked shadow maps.

It has no dynamic lighting or effects, which makes the video look like a high quality game from 2006.

yak3217• 3 months ago

dynamic objects are still largely unsolved problem, I just tried to approach it in this demo. also this particular place doesn't have reflective surfaces, but technology supports it - check for example this splat https://superspl.at/scene/ff1d0393 or this one https://superspl.at/scene/6c822f84

halflife2• 3 months ago

This is better, but I think that a demo with more reflections and radiosity would be much more impressive

ulfen• 3 months ago

This for some reason reminded me of the "Killerspiele" debate [1] we had in Germany after a dramatic school shooting. The shooter had previously built a map of the school in Counter-Strike. With this it's not a long stretch from there to having a realistic map of a school... Which would have given him a better rating than the one he got for his map: "I'd like to see the school that actually has lighting like this." [2] Hopefully this tech will never used for something like this.

[1] https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killerspiel [2] https://www.spiegel.de/netzwelt/web/schuelerhobby-mapping-me...

freakynit2• 3 months ago

This tech reminds me of that Source Code(2011) movie for some reason.

yak3217• 3 months ago

some game mode in Cyberpunk 2077 too

freakynit2• 3 months ago

Oh yea.. I remember that now...

Mission "The Information" based on a tech named "Braindance".. Thanks for reminding me of this.. was a crazy experience the first time I played.

This also now reminds me of Total Recall(2012) movie, especially that "Rekall" scene.

xnx• 3 months ago

Strikingly similar to the never completed Unrecord from 3 years ago: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IK76q13Aqt0

yak3217• 3 months ago

there another game, Bodycam, released on Steam - https://store.steampowered.com/app/2406770/Bodycam/ - but it's Unreal engine 5. This demo runs on my old 2020 iPhone, in browser

pphysch• 3 months ago

How practical would it be to include LIDAR in the initial real-world environmental scan to get (or at least seed/constrain with real data samples) an even better collision mesh?

yak3217• 3 months ago

XGrid Portal camera has Lidar, and this scan is made with it as I remember

bane• 3 months ago

Question for those making Splats...how do you get such large environments? I've been playing around with them a bit and I'm finding I'm running out of memory with surprisingly little built even on an RTX6000. Any tips or ideas would be awesome!

make33• 3 months ago

look at step 2 about streamed splats

zokier• 3 months ago

I saw a comment by the author that they did it as 9 scans with Reality Capture which presumably then were combined with some post-processing.

timfsu• 3 months ago

This is a really neat bridge between “looks cool” and “feels like you’re there”. Inferring real life properties like lighting is a cool trick and just the beginning I’m sure. I’m excited to explore new and dynamic worlds and bring the AAA experience closer to something you can build yourself.

marlburrow• 3 months ago

Really cool. Out of curiosity, what's the per-frame cost of rendering the splat scene compared to an equivalent triangle-mesh approximation? I've been wondering when (if ever) splatting becomes the default for web-delivered 3D content vs. just a research/SIGGRAPH-paper toy. Browser support and file-size feel like the two big walls.

yak3217• 3 months ago

i think splats are good for browsers as it's just a render call with relatively simple shader - imagine modern traditional rendering pipeline, where it's thousands of different passes + post processing, shadows etc. Effective splat sorting is a different story in browsers though

fho2• 3 months ago

"Back in the day" people were afraid that pupils would create CS (beta 6.5) maps of their schools. Gaussian Splatting would have been very convenient for that :-)

yak3217• 3 months ago

you would need a professional artist, several days and professional expensive equipment. It's not an easy task.

fho2• 3 months ago

Wouldn't be the first time that having nothing better to do (being in school) and dedication lead to amazing results.

make33• 3 months ago

I wonder how computationally expensive it would be to add ray tracing for the non splat surfaces (not even mutually)

yak3217• 3 months ago

i've seen demos with splats and raytracing - this one for example https://gaussiantracer.github.io/

zer0tonin• 3 months ago

Really cool looking stuff.

buibuibui• 3 months ago

This is so cool. I have a Insta360 camera lying around. Is it possible to use it to create a Gaussian Splat map with open source software?

yak3217• 3 months ago

I heard Insta360 is good for this.

yak3217• 3 months ago

And yeah you can definitely create splats with open source

tnelsond4• 3 months ago

Playing in brave on my Moto g power 2024 was low fps, but as soon as i pressed the shoot button my whole screen went purple pixel distortion lines and I had to restart my phone.

yak3217• 3 months ago

lowest settings? i just approached mobile devices, it's a lot of data and running in a browser .. it's a miracle it works there in the current state (on my 6-years old iPhone it allows me to walk and shoot at least). Streaming LOD is tweakable tbh, it may need to lower settings for mobiles.

medivhX• 3 months ago

Does this work on mobile browsers? Or is it desktop/GPU only?

yak3217• 3 months ago

It runs on mobiles with lowest settings and have interface for that, but desktop is preferable

stuckkeys• 3 months ago

that is pretty cool

invades• 3 months ago

Cool idea, runs decently enough even on a mobile device too which I found surprising. One thing I'd like to point out is that the view model looks very uncanny relative to everything else. Probably the least of your priorities when it comes to this demo though.

yak3217• 3 months ago

View model? Hands? Download from internet with permissive license - I was looking to something relatively realistic and remotely matching environment

patrickhener• 3 months ago

This is really an interesting project. I will definitely try it out after work hours.

Show HN: Turning a Gaussian Splat into a videogame

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