01 DCC (3D content-creation apps)
3DGS isn't limited to game engines anymore — it's become workable directly inside the 3D content-creation apps used in everyday VFX pipelines. Here's how each app supports it, and where to get it.
| Software | Rating | Details | Where to get it | License |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Maya + Arnold (Autodesk) | ◎ Top pick for relighting | Native support arrived with Arnold 7.5.2 (June 2026). Set a Points node's points.mode to gaussian and point file_name at a .ply to load it. Of the new gaussian_splat_shader's channels, emission outputs the SH color captured at scan time as-is, while raising the diffuse weight lets scene lights relight the splat — useful for shots where you need it to sit alongside CG elements. There's also provisional support for OpenUSD 26.03's ParticleField3DGaussianSplat schema. Because the integrated plugins (MtoA/MAXtoA/HtoA/C4DtoA/KtoA) all support it, any DCC with Arnold handles splats the same way. GPU rendering is limited to NVIDIA GPUs on Windows and Linux | arnoldrenderer.com → | Commercial ($55/mo or $430/yr, subscription only) |
| OctaneRender (OTOY) | ◎ Top pick for path tracing | A GPU renderer available standalone and through 21 DCC integration plugins (C4D, Maya, Blender, 3ds Max, Houdini, and more). Octane 2026 adds gaussian splats as a native primitive and renders them fully path traced rather than rasterized, so 3DGS participates directly in CG-side reflections, GI, and depth of field. The implementation reached production-grade stability in 2026.2, and 2026.4 reads SPZ v4 (SH degree 4). The same splat features work from whichever DCC you render in | home.otoy.com → | Commercial (subscription) |
| Houdini 22 | ◎ Top pick for power users | Native support. Splats can be transformed and animated with node-based workflows just like any other point cloud, and rendered directly in Karma. HtoA 6.5.2 and later also lets you render them through Arnold. Licensing cost and the learning curve are steep, though, so it's overkill if all you want is to look at a splat. Case study: the Houdini 22 × ComfyUI hybrid workflow | sidefx.com → | Commercial (free Indie/Apprentice tiers available) |
| Blender | ◎ Best value | Handled via the "3DGS Render" add-on from KIRI Engine. As of 5.0 (June 2026), it renders in both Cycles and Eevee, and supports editing and optimization alongside splat animation. Rigging and light baking are starting to appear as experimental features. It's free to install, but being dependent on a third-party add-on, it can get heavy on large datasets | GitHub → | Open source, free |
| 3ds Max 2027.2 | ◎ Top pick for editing | Native support landed in the core app with 2027.2 (July 2026). It can load PLY/SPZ/LCC directly, and the new Point object plus the Turn to Point / Point Select / Point Instance modifiers let you select and manipulate splats. Because ordinary modifiers like Bend and Twist just work, this is currently the only tool that treats a splat as an editable scene element rather than a fixed asset — its one real edge over the rest. Rendering goes through Arnold 7.5.2 via MAXtoA 5.9.3, and V-Ray 7's (Chaos) native support (7.3+ adds relighting) is still an option too | autodesk.com → | Commercial ($255/mo or $2,010/yr; Indie $330/yr) |
| Cinema 4D | ○ Good fit for motion graphics | Handled via a plugin from Octane (OTOY). It can load PLY files from Luma, Polycam, and NeRDF Studio, and pairs well with motion graphics work. Octane's splat support reached production-grade stability in 2026.2 (see the OctaneRender row above). Arnold also handles splats through C4DtoA 4.9.2 and later. Case study: generating "aerial shots" from 3DGS (a C4D → Octane workflow) | home.otoy.com → | Commercial (subscription) |
| Nuke 17.0 (Foundry) | ◎ Top pick for compositing | Native support in the core app since 17.0 (February 2026). On the overhauled USD-based 3D system, splats can be loaded, viewed, manipulated, rendered, and exported entirely inside Nuke, which means you can bring 3DGS directly into a live-action composite. For VFX compositing against a scanned background, this is currently the most direct route | foundry.com → | Commercial (subscription) |
| After Effects | ○ Good fit for motion graphics and compositing | Handled by a third-party "Gaussian Splatting" plugin (aescripts). It displays .ply files in real time on the GPU, supports sphere/box cropping, color ramps, noise deformation, and depth-pass export, and lets you place up to 10 models in a single composition. This depends on a paid plugin rather than native app functionality | aescripts.com → | Commercial (paid plugin) |
02 Viewers & editors
These are the tools you reach for when you need to check a deliverable, or do cropping and color adjustments entirely in the browser. The list spans everything from fully browser-based tools to developer-facing rendering libraries and mobile apps.
| Software | Rating | Details | Where to get it | License |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Locahun 3D Viewer (our own product) | — Not rated (our own product) | An offline, browser-only viewer we built in-house on top of Spark, designed for handling massive 3DGS datasets. Try a sample scene right now — no download or sign-up required | Try a sample → | In-house product (free demo) |
| SuperSplat (PlayCanvas) | ◎ Top pick | A fully browser-based 3DGS editor with cropping and color editing. A lightweight viewer meant purely for exported output is distributed as a separate repository | Editor → Viewer → | MIT, free |
| LichtFeld Studio (MrNeRF) | ◎ Top pick end-to-end from training | An open-source native app that covers everything from training on captured data (COLMAP), through brush/lasso/polygon-selection editing, to exporting PLY/SPZ/SOG and a standalone single-file HTML viewer. Training runs faster than the reference implementation, and as of v0.5.3 (July 2026) it also supports Vulkan rendering and LOD workflows. It can be extended with Python plugins too. CUDA is required, so it won't run on machines without an NVIDIA GPU (RTX 20 series / GTX 16 series or later) | GitHub → lichtfeld.io → | GPLv3, free |
| Brush (ArthurBrussee) | ○ No NVIDIA GPU required | An open-source training and display app written in Rust and WebGPU. Because it doesn't depend on CUDA, it runs on AMD and Intel GPUs and Apple Silicon in addition to NVIDIA, across native Windows/macOS/Linux/Android and even in-browser training. Research-derived extensions are still thin on the ground, and the developers themselves describe it as experimental | GitHub → | Apache 2.0, free |
| splat (antimatter15) | △ Reference implementation | One of the earliest publicly released, minimal WebGL viewers. Just drag and drop a .ply file to view it | GitHub → | MIT, free |
| GaussianSplats3D (mkkellogg) | ○ Good fit for developers | A Three.js-based rendering library you can drop into an existing Three.js scene to build your own custom viewer | GitHub → | Open source, free |
| Spark (sparkjsdev) | ◎ Top pick | A full-featured renderer for Three.js. It supports the major formats — PLY/SPZ/SPLAT/KSPLAT/SOG — and runs fast even on mobile. Locahun 3D's own viewer is built on top of this library | sparkjs.dev → | MIT, free |
| Luma AI (Interactive Scenes) | ○ Good fit for sharing | Processes captured scenes in the cloud and lets you share or embed them directly on the web. A Three.js/WebGL npm package is also published for developers | lumalabs.ai → | Free (sharing / embedding) |
| Postshot (Jawset) | ○ Weigh the commercial terms carefully | A desktop app that covers everything from training on captured data to real-time relighting and viewing. Windows only | jawset.com → | Free tier available (commercial use requires a paid plan) |
| Polycam | ○ Easy to get started | Covers everything from capture to viewing and editing (cropping, measurement), in both the browser and the mobile app | poly.cam → | Free tier available |
| Scaniverse (Niantic) | ○ Fully mobile | On-device capture and viewing entirely within the mobile app. Also supports WebXR viewing in the Quest 3 browser | nianticspatial.com → | Free |
Locahun3D Viewer
Try our own viewer with a sample scene too
Built in-house on top of Spark (above), this viewer is designed to handle massive 3DGS datasets entirely offline, in the browser. Try a sample scene right now, right in the page — no download or sign-up required.
Try a sample scene in your browser →03 Conversion tools
These are the tools for automating format conversion and LOD generation from the command line.
| Software | Rating | Details | Where to get it | License |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| splat-transform (PlayCanvas) | ◎ The de facto standard | Available as both a CLI and a library. It converts between PLY/SPZ/SOG/KSPLAT/LCC/LCC2 and more, and handles LOD generation, scene merging, and voxelization in one tool. A browser-only version, "SuperSplat Convert" (WASM, no install needed), is also published | npm install -g @playcanvas/splat-transformGitHub → | MIT, free |
| gsbox (gotoeasy) | ○ Handy for one-off conversions | A cross-platform CLI that converts between PLY⇄SPLAT/SPX/SPZ/SOG/GLB (KHR_gaussian_splatting extension). It also has its own block-compressed SPX format for progressively loading large models | GitHub → | GPL-3.0, free |
| 3dgsconverter (francescofugazzi) | ○ Cleans up data as it converts | A Python CLI that converts between PLY/KSplat/SOG/SPZ/Splat/compressed PLY and more. It can apply GPU-accelerated cleanup — statistical outlier removal, density filtering — at the same time as conversion | GitHub → | Open source, free |
04 Game-engine plugins (UE5 / Unity)
These plugins bring 3DGS directly into UE5 or Unity, for real-time display or for rendering out material through a virtual camera.
Unreal Engine 5
| Plugin | Rating | Details | Where to get it | License |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| XGRIDS LCC Plugin for UE | ◎ Top pick (check the license terms) | Loads LCC/LCC2 natively and supports relighting. Case study: exporting material from 3DGS with UE5 × the XGRIDS SDK | developer.xgrids.com → | XGRIDS proprietary license |
| Volinga Plugin | ◎ Top pick for virtual production | Loads PLY and Volinga's own NVOL format; even the free tier supports additive lighting, where splats interact with scene lights. The Pro tier adds full relighting through proxy meshes, multi-GPU rendering, and ACES/HDR color, and as of August 2026 relighting for 4DGS (moving splats) as well. A commercial plugin built for in-camera VFX and virtual production | volinga.ai → | Commercial (tiered plans; Pro is a higher tier) |
| Luma AI UE Plugin | ○ Great for a quick try | Drag and drop a .ply or .luma file to turn it into a Blueprint | Fab → | Free |
| XScene-UEPlugin (XVERSE) | ○ Free real-time rendering | Renders in real time through Niagara and also includes editing and management features | GitHub → | Apache 2.0, free |
| MLSLabs GS Renderer | ○ High performance, niche | A custom pipeline that skips Niagara entirely, keeping high frame rates even with millions of gaussians. Also supports dynamic 4DGS (volumetric video) | GitHub → | Open source, free |
| NanoGS | ◎ One to watch | Uses Nanite-style, screen-space-error-based LOD clustering to render large scenes efficiently | GitHub → | MIT, free (UE5.6+) |
Unity
| Plugin | Rating | Details | Where to get it | License |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| XGRIDS LCC Unity SDK | ○ Check the license terms | Provides a full set of features: rendering, raycasting, clipping, and more | GitHub → | XGRIDS proprietary license |
| UnityGaussianSplatting (aras-p) | ◎ The standard choice | The go-to open-source implementation, supporting PLY and SPZ formats. v2.x supports Unity 6 LTS and runs on D3D12/Metal/Vulkan across PC/Mac/mobile. Confirmed working on Quest, Vive, and Varjo | GitHub → | MIT-family OSS, free |
Check the license before using XGRIDS plugins/SDKsThe XGRIDS LCC Plugin for UE and LCC Unity SDK are both distributed under XGRIDS' own proprietary license. If you're considering commercial use or redistribution, always confirm the license terms with the vendor before adopting either one.
05 Industrial platforms (robotics / geospatial)
3DGS isn't just for film and video production. Platforms that put real-world scans to work as "training environments for robot AI" or "city-scale geospatial data" have also matured rapidly through 2026. Knowing about these secondary uses for captured footage can change how you think about the value of your scan data.
| Platform | Rating | Details | Where to get it | License |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| NVIDIA Omniverse / Isaac Sim(NuRec) | ◎ Top pick for robotics | Isaac Sim integrates the NuRec family of libraries, which reconstruct 3DGS environments from real-world sensor data, and Omniverse RTX natively renders OpenUSD's ParticleField geometry (3DGS/3DGUT). You can run robots through the scanned real-world space and mass-produce synthetic training data (SDG) — RGB, depth, and more. For autonomous-driving use cases, there's also a CARLA integration. Case study: bringing 3DGS into NVIDIA Isaac Sim | developer.nvidia.com → | Free (personal / evaluation); commercial use requires an NVIDIA license |
| Cesium(3D Tiles) | ◎ Top pick for city scale | 3DGS was formally added to 3D Tiles in April 2026, enabling tiered LOD streaming through CesiumJS, Cesium for Unreal, and Cesium ion. It can deliver everything from city-scale coverage to centimeter-level detail with geographic coordinates attached, with a payload built on glTF's KHR_gaussian_splatting extension (RC as of February 2026) plus SPZ compression. For digital-twin and GIS use cases, this is currently the mainstream route for 3DGS | cesium.com → | CesiumJS is Apache 2.0; ion is a commercial plan |
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