Gaussian Splatting Explained: Tutorials and Workflows for Cinema 4D and After Effects

Gaussian Splat Render Flying through scene of a church in the country

Basics of Gaussian Splats

Gaussian Splatting is a new technique in 3D rendering that uses point clouds to recreate realistic scenes from real-world captures. It’s an exciting shift in how we can turn photos or video into rich, immersive visuals — no traditional 3D modeling required.

In this guide, I’ll break down what Gaussian Splatting is, how it works, and how you can start using it in apps like Cinema 4D and After Effects. I’ve also included a free tool, exclusive to Alpha Pixel subscribers, to help you import splats and get started faster.

 

Creating Gaussian Splats

To create a Gaussian Splat of a real-world environment, you’ll need to start with photogrammetry — capturing a series of images or video of a scene from multiple angles. You can do this using just about any camera: a DSLR, drone, or even your phone.

Photos vs. Video

You can upload using either photo or video to capture your scene or objects. There are pros and cons to each.

• Video gives you more frames and coverage, which can help with reconstruction but will likely give worse quality when it comes to sharpness.

• Photos usually gives you better image quality and more control but need to be careful to capture the whole scene or object with lots of images and angles.

Either approach works — just make sure you’re following the upload guidelines of whatever app you’re using. Some have file size or video length limits, and some require a specific number of images to process properly.

Tools for Processing Splats

Two of the most popular apps right now are:

• Luma Labs AI (recommended if importing to After Effects)

• Polycam (my personal pick — They offer various ways of working with your captures and offer more export options along with solid tutorials)

Both can generate either a traditional 3D model or a Gaussian Splat. For Polycam you’ll want to export a Splat PLY file and for Luma Labs AI you will want to download the Gaussian Splat File. Pay attention to the options because there are many export options and the wrong one will lead to errors when importing into a splat editor. Below is a look at the export options from Polycam. 

The next set of export options is from Luma Labs AI.

Both of these apps have built-in tools to capture photos or video directly from your phone, or you can shoot your footage first and upload it later.

 

Editing Gaussian Splats

Once you’ve created a Gaussian Splat, you might find that the point cloud is a bit messy or too large to work with efficiently. Most 3D programs can handle it, but depending on the size and density, it’s something to keep in mind.

You might also want to:

• Clean up the scene by removing unwanted parts of the point cloud

• Isolate a specific object or area

• Reposition or rotate the splat to better fit your workflow

• Fix orientation issues, like the scene importing on the wrong axis

For all of this, there’s a free web-based tool called Super Splat that makes it easy to edit your Gaussian Splats directly in the browser. It’s super handy for trimming down your scene or making quick adjustments before importing into other software.

 

Working With Gaussian Splats in After Effects

The easiest way to use Gaussian Splats in After Effects is with a plugin by Irrealix, simply called Gaussian Splatting. You can grab it from AE Scripts.

The plugin is pretty straightforward — it gives you an interface inside After Effects where you can load a Gaussian Splat and start working with it. Just keep in mind: not all .ply files will work. You’ll need one that’s specifically exported as a Gaussian Splat PLY.

The team behind the plugin recommends creating your splats with Luma Labs AI that we mentioned earlier. Once your scene is processed, download it using the “Gaussian Splat” option. From there:

1. Import the .ply splat file into After Effects using the plugin.

2. Create a new solid.

3. Apply the Gaussian Splatting effect and load in your file.

4. Create a Camera and move around your scene!

That’s it — you’ll see your splat rendered directly in your comp. There are also versions of the plugin available for Nuke and DaVinci Resolve, if you’re working in those environments too.

Working With Gaussian Splats in Cinema 4D 

There are a few ways to work with Gaussian Splats in C4D, one utilizing particles and the other using the cloner object, both involve workarounds which we’ll discuss. The first is there is no native importing of splats so I have created a free plugin that will be release shortly in the Freebies section to import the point cloud in as a polygon object where the vertex’s correlate to the point cloud including a vertex color tag to hold the color information. Currently with the plugin you can import splats from either Luma labs or Polycam, others may be possible but have not been tested. 

  1. Run the plugin which will prompt you to locate you Gaussain Splat file. There should be a dialogue letting you know the import was sucessful.
  2. Once imported you won’t see anything until you click on the polygon object it created which holds all the points of of your gaussian splat scene. Once you click on the polygon object you will see points but you won’t see any color until you click on the Vertex Color tag. To make it so the points and colors are always visible you can click “Draw Points Always” in the tag options.
  3. Now that we have the scene loaded we have to create a particle system to be able to render them since Cinema 4D cannot natively render points. We’ll need to use particles and the built in Redshift render engine to make them visible. To do this we need to setup a Mesh Emitter with the polygon object that holds our point cloud loaded into the Geometry Field.
  4. Set the mode to “Points”, Start Frame to 0. Then we need to change the emitter type to “Shot” so that we get 1 particle per vertex.
  5. The only other thing we need to do is in the “Property Maps” tab we need to load in the vertex color tag that is on the geometry object which hold our point cloud. Now when you rewind the scene and hit play you should see particles show up with color that can be rendered. From here you can add forces to the scene and push the points around like any other particle system!