Perhaps the biggest fear for a project team is realizing that the current production pipeline is not as efficient and high quality as it could be, one week before the final presentations.
Thanks to John Dessler’s advice, we invited out Subject Matter Expert Dom Ross to our Softs presentation. We had a chance to show him our current pipeline, and ask questions about why some assets don’t look as good as they should be. There are three major discoveries:
- We knew that the render is only as good as your data input. We did not, however, include a manual data cleaning step after the Blender step in our pipeline.
- There’s a new update made to Litchtfeld that made it a lot more user-friendly, and Litchtfeld might give us better 3DGS renders than PostShot could.
- There’s a new Unreal Engine plugin that should not lower the quality of the 3DGS file as much as our current plugin, which is old.
To the first point, our current supermarket render looks good in some areas but blurry in general. Dom took a look at our RealityScan file, and pointed out that there are multiple components, which is a red flag.
Think of it like building a jigsaw puzzle. A Component is simply a group of puzzle pieces that successfully snapped together.
In a perfect world, all of the images connect to form one single, giant puzzle (usually labeled Component 0).
When we see a Component 1, it means the software couldn’t figure out how to connect that second batch of photos to the main group. We now have disconnected “islands” of data floating in space. And as you can see, the supermarket RealityScan file shows Component 0-18, which means there are 17 batches of photos (data) that are now excluded from the calculation.
This brings us to an important topic: how do we make sure the data capture step is as good as it can be?
While many apps now makes it seem extremely easy to do 3DGS, such as Niantic’s Scanniverse phone app that renders a 3DGS model in seconds using just your phone’s camera and computing power, if you want to “go bigger,” here are some things you need to understand to maximize data quality.
Two consecutive images should have 70 degrees overlap.
Using a 360 camera is one way to make sure you get enough overlap. This is also why the Blender step is crucial. You need to extract the correct amount of frames per second to have the ideal overlap between one image and the next. Our SME says that 1 minute videos is the sweet spot for datasets. For bigger scenes like the supermarket we scanned, Dom suggested that we scan one aisle at a time, and use editors like SuperSplat to stitch the aisles into a single scene.
Delete blurry photos.
Walk slowly and smoothly.
Imagine the pacing you see in Western movies where two people stand with their backs against each other, and start walking 10 paces before they draw their pistols in a duo. When you’re holding the camera, walk in that type of slow and steady pace (not necessary to stop after each step).
Avoid featureless surfaces.
Single-color walls are a good example.
Avoid uneven lighting and shadow.
Unless you are in a super controlled environment, the sunlight may change, or your own shadow may be in frame. This is another reason to use 360 cameras; it captures a lot of angles at once, so you sort of have a still moment in time where the lighting is all the same. Over and underexposure are both bad. There are some Insta360 camera settings that can help even out the lighting:
In manual mode, select Flat instead of Standard or Vivid Bright. This produces videos with lower saturation.
Shutter speed: don’t go too
How Our Softs Went
We presented a “menu” to faculty, so they could “order their own Softs.” People seemed to like this novel way of introducing our topic; one professor even took a photo of our “menu.” For us, it was a way to gauge what topics people were interested in. Here are the notes from Softs, separated by individual sessions:
Ricardo Washington
- Q: What are the minimum requirements to do 3DGS?
- A: The barrier to entry is low, but the ceiling is also very high. You could do a decent scan with just your phone, but if you want high-end results, then the requirements are numerous.
- Q: Use cases?
- A: Jurassic World Rebirth (2025) used 3DGS for pre-vis. NVIDIA’s Omniverse is developing supports for 3DGS assets. Geographic Information System (GIS) is a field that’s actively pushing for more use of 3DGS.
- Q: How efficient is using the Niagara particle system to choreograph point clouds?
- Q: What are the things you tried to do and failed?
- Q: How well does TouchDesigner integrate into VFX pipeline?
- Q: What were your expectations of this technique, vs what you know now?
Tom Corbett
- Q: What do we find the most exciting about 3DGS?
- Observation: When watching the animatic, the supermarket transition got a good “wow.” He assumed that we used Maximo animation for the dancing in space sequence, when it was motion-captured instead.
- Q: What are splats in the snow scene?
- Q: Show me your best splat
- Q: Could you capture and preserve the ETC before we move away in a few years? There seems to be sentimental value in using 3DGS.
- Q: Use cases in memory care? Patients with dementia and other similar conditions could be placed into familiar environments, or be placed into hospitals enviornments to familiarize themselves before moving to the hospital.
- Suggestion: Talk to Jake Jeffery, a ETC alum, who works for Niantic’s R&D lab
Derek Ham
- Observation: the garden scene got a good “what?”
- Q: How big are the 3DGS files?
- Q: Use cases?
Ruth Comley
- Q: Start with discussing Capture and Render. Need to give people context first.
- Q: The documentation slide looks intimidating. Perhaps present it like an ad.
- Q: TouchDesigner?
- A: There’s no integration with Unreal, so the only way to add TD in is in post-production
- Q: What is 3DGS’s purpose other than to be artsy?
- A: Cost-efficient way to do live concerts’ choreography
Scott Stevens and Drew Davidson
- Q: Intentional Animation?
- Q: Use cases in forensics?
- Q: Could a serial killer use 3DGS to plan a crime?
- Q: Use cases in archeology?
- Suggestion: Present it as a discovery project
- Q: You make it sound very easy to do a scan. What are the limitations?
- Direct quote: “You don’t have a narrative, and that’s ok.”
- Q: Can we watch the demo reel?
Dom Ross (Subject Matter Expert)
- How to capture and clean up the dataset to optimize it.
- Suggested alternative Unreal Engine plugin (MLSrenderer) and software (LichtFeld Studio) similar to PostShot.
- This plugin doesn’t support Niagara Particle System.
- Creative feedback on the animatic
Media from Softs:
How the Alumni Weekend Showcase Went
A standout moment from the semester came when we taught a child how to do a 3DGS scan of a plushie using an iPhone and the Scaniverse app. As soon as he saw the amazing rendered result, he excitedly asked his parents to scan him next. It was a wonderful moment to witness: the instant technology stopped feeling like a tool and became something playful, memory-building, and entirely his own.
4/13-4/17/2026