NeRF vs. Gaussian Splatting

The industry has shifted. While Neural Radiance Fields (NeRF) defined the "volumetric era," 3D Gaussian Splatting (3DGS) has claimed the throne for real-time applications. Understanding the fundamental difference in their rendering primitives is essential for any Visual AI pipeline.

Volume Rendering vs. Rasterization

NeRF: The Implicit Neural Approach

NeRFs represent a scene as a continuous function $(\mathbf{x}, \mathbf{d}) \to (\mathbf{c}, \sigma)$, where $\mathbf{x}$ is position, $\mathbf{d}$ is direction, $\mathbf{c}$ is color, and $\sigma$ is density. To render a single pixel, you must sample hundreds of points along a ray and pass them through an MLP.

• Complexity: $(N \times S \times M)$ where $N$ is pixels, $S$ is samples per ray, and $M$ is the MLP inference cost.
• Result: High visual fidelity but cripplingly slow for interactive use.

Gaussian Splatting: The Explicit Primitive Approach

3DGS represents the world as millions of 3D ellipsoids (Gaussians). Each Gaussian is defined by its center $\mu$, covariance $\Sigma$, opacity $\alpha$, and Spherical Harmonics (SH) for view-dependent color.

• Complexity: $(G \log G + N)$ where $G$ is the number of Gaussians. Sorting and tile-based rasterization (leveraging GPU hardware similarly to triangles) make this incredibly efficient.
• Result: 100+ FPS at 4K resolution on consumer hardware.

Comparison Table

Why the Shift Happened

The "Black Box" nature of NeRFs made them nearly impossible to edit or integrate with standard game engines. Gaussian Splatting, being an explicit representation, allows for:

1. Direct Manipulation: You can literally delete or move a cluster of Gaussians.
2. Standard Pipeline Integration: Splats can be converted to meshes or point clouds, or rendered using custom Shaders in Unity/Unreal Engine.
3. Low Latency: Crucial for VR/AR and interactive web experiences.

Visual Standards

In a professional workflow, 3DGS assets should exhibit crisp geometry without "floaters" (stray splats). Our automated cleaning pipelines ensure that the point cloud density is optimized for both visual fidelity and VRAM efficiency, moving away from the "noisy" aesthetics of early AI experiments toward architectural precision.

Ready to turn splats into game assets? Read our guide on Text-to-Mesh 2026: Generating Production-Ready 3D Assets.