http://blog.schwa.io/posts/Recent content in Posts on blog.schwa.ioHugoen-USThu, 09 Apr 2026 00:00:00 +0000http://blog.schwa.io/posts/metalsprockets-gaussian-splats/Thu, 09 Apr 2026 00:00:00 +0000http://blog.schwa.io/posts/metalsprockets-gaussian-splats/<p>This post is a walkthrough of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/3D_Gaussian_splatting">3D Gaussian Splatting</a> (3DGS) and my Swift/Metal implementation, <a href="https://github.com/schwa/MetalSprocketsGaussianSplats">MetalSprocketsGaussianSplats</a>. In this post, I cover what splats are, how they&rsquo;re generated, the various on-disk file formats, and the &ldquo;standard&rdquo; 3DGS rendering pipeline. I assume you&rsquo;re somewhat comfortable with 3D graphics but haven&rsquo;t worked with Gaussian splats before.</p> <h2 id="what-are-3d-gaussian-splats">What Are 3D Gaussian Splats?</h2> <p>I like to oversimplistically describe a 3D Gaussian Splat (3DGS) as a &ldquo;fancy point cloud.&rdquo; They&rsquo;re a computer graphics technique for representing and rendering 3D scenes, and unlike meshes or <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voxel">voxels</a>, they can produce photorealistic results from real-world captures without ever defining a single triangle.</p>