benjamin-feldman/3dgs-weekend

3DGS Weekend is the code that goes along with a tutorial called 3D Gaussian Splatting in a Weekend. Gaussian splatting is a technique for rendering photorealistic 3D scenes, and this project is a small, self contained implementation meant for someone following the tutorial to build and run themselves rather than a full production tool. The program is written in C++ and needs a C++17 compiler, the GLFW library for creating windows and handling input, OpenGL version 3.3 for rendering, and a bundled GLM library included as a git submodule for math operations. Because of the submodule, cloning the repository requires the recurse submodules flag so that GLM comes along with it. On macOS, GLFW and the pkg-config tool can be installed with Homebrew before building. Once the dependencies are in place, the project builds with a single make command. Running it requires a 3D Gaussian Splatting scene file in the PLY format, using the naming and byte layout style produced by the original GraphDeCo research project, passed in as an argument to the run command. Once the scene is loaded, you move around it with a simple set of controls: the W, A, S, and D keys move the camera, Q and E move down and up, the arrow keys look around, dragging with the left mouse button orbits the view, the scroll wheel zooms, and Escape quits the program. The README does not state a license, and the project is best understood as a teaching example for people who want to learn how Gaussian splatting rendering works by building the renderer step by step alongside the accompanying tutorial, rather than a ready made application for viewing arbitrary 3D scenes.