Technical deep dive9 Apr 2026· 1 h 58 min

3D Gaussian Splatting explained in a non-technical way – Olli Huttunen

Listen to the audio

Olli Huttunen explains 3D Gaussian Splatting like 3D pointillism and shows what works in production: 360 camera capture, Postshot processing, Blender tooling and browser publishing with PlayCanvas. He is equally clear about the trade-offs – soft edges, weak geometry for meshes, floaters and lighting.

Key ideas

1Gaussian splats shine for fast, photoreal rendering, VR viewing and browser delivery.
2They are weak for mesh conversion and close-up geometry.
3Capture quality still decides the result – fewer images is not better capture.
4Interactive presentations are an emerging use beyond static showcases.

Full show notes

With Olli Huttunen

3D Gaussian Splatting workflow, 360 camera capture, Postshot processing, Blender tooling, PlayCanvas publishing, and synthetic Gaussian splats — this episode with Olli Huttunen breaks down what actually works in production. Olli explains 3DGS in plain language, shows why capture quality still matters, shares his Magic Wand multi-camera rig, and walks through his 360 Extractor plugin and Dioramics presentation system for interactive 3D storytelling.

Inside the conversation, Olli explains 3D Gaussian Splatting like 3D pointillism, compares 3DGS with photogrammetry and NeRFs, and details where Gaussian splats shine: fast, photoreal scene rendering, immersive VR viewing, browser delivery, and lightweight presentation workflows. He also covers the tradeoffs: soft edges up close, weak geometry for mesh conversion, lighting inconsistency, floaters, and why fewer images is not the same as better capture.

You’ll also hear Olli’s practical 360 scanning workflow: mixing camera heights, extracting usable views from equirectangular footage in Blender, removing operator-visible angles, combining ground and drone captures, and optimizing datasets for better training on limited VRAM. He shares why Postshot handled mixed-camera datasets better than Luma in his tests, why overcast conditions still matter, and how geospatial, VR, and synthetic 3DGS workflows are evolving.

The episode also goes deep on browser-native 3DGS tools. Olli discusses PlayCanvas SuperSplat, SOG compression for smaller splat files, Babylon.js-based Dioramics, iframe embeds, offline-sensitive use cases, and the emerging opportunity to turn Gaussian splats into interactive presentations instead of static showcases.