Gaussian Splat

Interaction

AI Tools

VAT

splatgarden

A living, collaborative portfolio showcase

where the medium is the work

Try SplatGarden

SplatGarden turns a portfolio into a place you can stand inside.

SplatGarden places student work inside a cohesive, living 3D garden built from procedural plant growth, effects simulation, AI stylization, and vertex animation textures (VAT). The garden works two ways at once: anyone can walk through it and feel it react to them, while others can dig into the making of each piece.

SplatGarden earns its name for the use of Gaussian splatting, a rendering technique that transforms photos into a realistic 3D scene accessible from any perspective in real time. Normally locked in a pipeline, Gaussian splatting here opens a world that anyone can walk through.

No installation, no reel

Explore a real-time Gaussian Splat environment with a single URL.

Work in context

Discover each artist's work where it was meant, and built, to live.

Interactive by design

Explore a real-time Gaussian Splat environment with a single URL.

Opens in a browser

A real-time Gaussian Splat environment loads from a single URL.

Work in context

Each artist's work sits where it was meant, and built, to live.

Interactive by design

Move freely through the scene as it responds to every gesture and click.

Inside the Garden

Every interaction carries weight, from navigating the scene to triggering live effects. Users art direct the environment across multiple display modes, or click any asset to surface its full technical story.

Navigate freely with a mouse or hand gesture

Touch anywhere in the scene to trigger live effects

Art direct the scene across multiple display modes: Gaussian splat, USD Voxel, point clouds, and painterly styles

Technical breakdown: camera specs and asset credits

Assest Creation

Plant Growth Tools

Two custom Houdini tools were built to replicate the organic structure and growth of grape hyacinth and daffodils. The hyacinth tool drives floret placement using the golden angle to recreate natural spiral phyllotaxis, while the daffodil tool layers KineFX rigging with Vellum simulation for soft, organic petal motion.

Graph Hyacinth

Daffodil

Stylized Textures

A custom AI stylization tool was used to extract shapes and structure from original, realistic texture, combining them with the look of a chose style reference. This generated a painterly, art-directed output while preserving the underlying detail. The result was next refined in Houdini's COP Network and Substance Painter.

Landscape Texture

Daffodil

Effects with Gaussian splats in Houdini

Gaussian Splats carry native attributes like alpha, scale, color, and orientation that can be read and manipulated directly in Houdini. Particle and pyro simulations were applied directly to the splat alongside the GSOPs plugin, significantly speeding up the effects workflow.

Final Result

Technical Breakdown

Procedural Vine Growth in Unreal Engine

Two procedural systems drive the vine's growth. The stem runs on a real-time GPU workflow, using UV directional masking and vertex color to control where the mesh grows, with World Position Offset handling the deformation. Layered on top, Unreal's Motion Design plugin scatters flower and leaf assets across the mesh using a Cloner component, with Plane and Sphere Effectors controlling their scale and growth timing. Driven through Sequencer and Blueprint, the blooming follows the vine's direction in real time, creating a fully procedural growth sequence from stem to flower.

Procedural Vine Grow Tool

Environment Assets

The team procedurally modeled the foliage in SpeedTree, optimizing polygon counts throughout to maintain real-time performance. Those assets then moved into Substance Designer, where textures took on the painterly aesthetic of the garden scene.

Daisies

Plant Growth Tools

Graph Hyacinth

Daffodil

Stylized Textures 

Landscape Texture

Daffodil

Effects with Gaussian splats in Houdini

Final Result

Technical Breakdown

Procedural Vine Growth in Unreal Engine

Procedural Vine Grow Tool

Environment Assets

Daisies

Plant Growth Tools

Graph Hyacinth

Daffodil

Stylized Textures 

Landscape Texture

Daffodil

Effects with Gaussian splats in Houdini

Final Result

Technical Breakdown

Procedural Vine Growth in Unreal Engine

Procedural Vine Grow Tool

Environment Assets

Daisies

The scene was populated using a combination of Procedural Content Generation (PCG) and Unreal Engine's Foliage Painting Tool, each serving a distinct purpose. PCG handled large-scale distribution across the environment, while the Foliage Painting Tool allowed for hand-crafted placement in areas requiring finer detail and artistic control.