3DGRUT VIS

3DGRUT VIS is a high-performance 3D Gaussian Splatting visualization engine tightly integrated with the 3dgrut repository, leveraging ANARI and VisRTX rendering backends. It provides both native C++ interactive and headless viewers, as well as Python bindings and a flexible Polyscope-based interactive viewer.

Features

• Interactive Viewer: High-performance C++ viewer using GLFW and ImGui for real-time 3D navigation and parameter tuning.
• Headless Command Line Viewer: C++ application to render 3D Gaussian scenes to PNG files directly.
• Polyscope Viewer (Python): A unified Python viewer that allows seamless on-the-fly switching between multiple rendering backends (anari, 3dgrt, 3dgut).
• CUDA-GL Interop: Zero-copy display path on supported devices for maximum performance.
• Python Bindings: Exposes the GaussianRendererCore through pybind11 for custom integration.

Installation

Prerequisites

• CMake >= 3.17
• OptiX SDK (Downloaded automatically if not found locally)
• CUDA Toolkit (Optional, but required for 3dgrt/3dgut backends and CUDA-GL interop)

Python Package (Recommended)

You can install the Python package, which automatically builds the C++ core and exposes the Python bindings.

Using uv (recommended):

uv sync

Or using pip:

pip install .

To include the dependencies for the Polyscope interactive viewer:

pip install .[polyscope]

C++ Standalone Build

To build the native viewers directly, you can use the provided build scripts:

Linux / macOS:

./build_visualization.sh

Windows:

.\build_visualization.ps1

Alternatively, you can build manually with CMake:

mkdir build && cd build
cmake .. -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release
cmake --build . --parallel

Usage

Polyscope Viewer (Python)

The Polyscope viewer provides a rich GUI and allows switching rendering backends dynamically:

polyscope-viewer /path/to/scene.ply [--renderer anari|3dgrt|3dgut]

(Note: 3dgrt and 3dgut backends require the threedgrut repository to be installed).

Interactive Viewer (C++)

The native interactive viewer offers maximum performance:

interactive-viewer /path/to/scene.ply [options]

Controls:

• LMB drag: Orbit
• RMB drag: Pan
• Scroll: Zoom
• W/S: Dolly forward/backward
• A/D: Strafe left/right
• Q/E: Orbit pitch (up/down)
• G: Toggle GUI
• S: Save screenshot
• Escape: Quit

Headless Renderer (C++)

Render directly to an image file:

gaussian-viewer /path/to/scene.ply [options]

Outputs gaussian_viewer.png by default.

Project Structure

• src/ - Core C++ implementation, containing the GaussianRendererCore, pybind11 wrappers, and standalone viewers.
• gaussian_viewer/ - Python package containing the polyscope_viewer and launcher scripts.
• CMakeLists.txt - CMake build system configuring ANARI, VisRTX, and OptiX dependencies.
• pyproject.toml - Python packaging configuration using scikit-build-core.