Hi everyone,
With SketchUp’s new Gaussian Splats extension now available, I thought I’d share a little tool I’ve been building for those interested in synthetic Gaussian Splatting workflows.
Splat Helper SKP is designed for creating and exporting synthetic datasets from SketchUp scenes in COLMAP format.
It’s probably a bit niche, but if you’re playing with synthetic datasets you might find it useful.
The extension is paid, but there’s a 3 day free trial available if you’d like to test it first.
Extension Warehouse:
I’m also very open to feedback and feature requests. If you’re experimenting with synthetic splats and see functionality that would make your workflow easier, I’d love to hear about it.
Thought I’d share the results of a quick test. I created this Gaussian splat from a 3D pine tree model. The camera poses, point cloud and COLMAP data were exported from SketchUp using the extension, 272 images were rendered with D5 Render in 2000x2000 resolution, and the resulting splat was trained in LichtFeld Studio.
You can view the Splat here: Pinus Sylvestris Synthetic Splat TEST SketchUp + D5 Render - SuperSplat
Hi Micky,
I’m interested in this. We at our studio only record Gaussian splats using a Lixel scanner. When you say a synthetic Gaussian splat, you are describing the process of designing something in SketchUp, rendering it in D5, and then sharing all those renders as images to create a photogrammetry model, like you would in Reality Capture or, in this case, in LichtFeld studio. How do you using your plugin create those 272 camera poses?
Hi,
Yes, exactly. Since we’re working with a 3D model, the camera poses are already known. The extension exports both the point cloud and the COLMAP data, which is theoretically 100% accurate (unlike real-world data). This means you can jump straight to training instead of first estimating camera positions, as you normally would with a real-world dataset.
To get started, use the Place Rig button on the toolbar to place one or more rigs. Then right-click a rig group and choose Splat Helper SKP → Edit Rig from the context menu to edit it. Alternatively, you can simply select a group and click Place Rig to automatically place a rig around the selected object.
Rigs can be created from preset shapes (such as different types of spheres and cubes), or you can create your own by modeling any shape you like and selecting Custom from the Rig Shape dropdown.
Once your rigs are set up and your camera settings are configured, click COLMAP ALL to export the point cloud and camera data. The next step is Scene Creation ALL, which creates SketchUp scenes for every camera in every rig. After that, render those scenes using your preferred rendering software. Just make sure the rendered image resolution matches the camera resolution configured in the extension.
You can use multiple rigs in the same project. In my example, I used a Fibonacci sphere with subdivision level 5, along with a custom cylindrical rig (without top or bottom faces) modeled around the tree to capture additional viewpoints.
