3D Gaussian Splatting (3DGS) Hybrid Rendering

Myth integrates 3D Gaussian Splatting as a first-class citizen of its rendering pipeline. This is not merely a standalone viewer — it achieves true deep hybrid rendering of neural radiance fields with the traditional polygonal PBR pipeline.

1. Enabling the 3DGS Feature

Because 3DGS requires a highly customized GPU radix sort and indirect draw commands, the feature is hidden behind a feature flag by default to keep the engine extremely lean.

Enable the relevant features in Cargo.toml:

myth = { git = "...", branch = "main", features = ["3dgs", "gaussian-npz"] }

2. Basic Loading & Rendering

You can load point cloud data as easily as a regular mesh and place it in the scene graph:

// 1. Load a compressed NPZ-format Gaussian point cloud
let cloud = engine.assets.load_gaussian_npz("assets/3dgs/point_cloud.npz".into());

// 2. Inject a scene node
let node = scene.add_gaussian_cloud("gaussian_cloud", cloud);

// 3. Transform freely
scene.node(&node).set_rotation_euler(
    std::f32::consts::FRAC_PI_2,
    0.0,
    0.0,
);

High-Fidelity Path Required

3DGS strongly depends on a high-precision depth buffer and post-processing compositing logic, so you must explicitly use the RenderPath::HighFidelity render path when initializing the App.

3. A Physically Correct Hybrid Pipeline

Myth's 3DGS integration solves several pain points common in the industry today:

1. Depth Testing: When rasterizing, the Gaussian point cloud reads the depth buffer generated by the PBR opaque geometry (Opaque Pass), achieving perfect spatial occlusion between traditional 3D models and the Gaussian-splatted scene.
2. Color Space Compositing: During projection and covariance computation, the engine rigorously calibrates color conversion. This ensures the point cloud output blends with the PBR scene in the correct linear color space, ultimately handled uniformly by the Bloom and Tone Mapping nodes, eliminating jarring color discrepancies.

Next Steps

• Understand where 3DGS sits in a frame → Render Paths & Frame Composer
• Try the 3DGS demo live → Gallery