REAL-TIME VISUALIZATION OF 3D TRIANGLE SPLATS FOR UNREAL ENGINE

Abstract

The recent development of 3D Gaussian Splatting, has enabled real-time rendering with realistic visuals. Triangle Splatting further refines 3DGS by utilizing the fundamental primitive of computer graphics” the triangle” thereby enabling seamless integration with traditional rendering pipelines. However, a significant gap remains between the theoretical renderers used for training and testing and their practical implementation in production game engines. This paper addresses this gap by proposing a viewport architecture for the real-time visualization of 3D Triangle Splats within Unreal Engine. We leverage the capabilities of the Niagara particle system to manage and project a” triangle soup” of millions of primitives. Each triangle is represented as a particle, with its attributes stored in GPU-resident structured buffers accessed via a custom Niagara Data Interface. We detail a custom rasterization pipeline, implemented in HLSL, that executes the Signed Distance Field (SDF)-based window function core to the Triangle Splatting methodology. Our architecture achieves high frame rates at high resolutions, demonstrating a viable pathway for integrating Triangle Splatting into real-time applications. We present a thorough performance analysis, evaluating rendering performance and visual quality against Traditional Techniques, and discuss the challenges and future directions for Triangle Splatting in interactive game engines and 3D based Rendering tools.