3D Gaussian Splatting: Windows setup and scene tutorial

Uploaded on August 28, 2023, this beginner tutorial explains how to create and view 3D Gaussian Splatting scenes on Windows 10 or 11 using Jonathan Stephens' Windows repository fork. The setup reflects the software context of that upload: CUDA Toolkit 11.8 was the referenced tested version, while the speaker used 11.7 and warned against 11.6 and 12 or later. He also specifies Visual Studio 2019 or newer with desktop development for C++, and COLMAP 3.8 for Windows with CUDA.

The workflow starts with dependency installation and a Conda environment. Viewers then prepare overlapping photos, or extract video frames with FFmpeg, before using COLMAP through the conversion script to prepare camera data. The speaker recommends slow capture around a mostly static scene, with little motion blur and several viewing angles. Existing still photos can skip frame extraction; ImageMagick is an optional resizing dependency.

The presenter starts conversion on a crane video but stops it, then switches to previously processed images and saved outputs to continue the demonstration. He starts a training run but also stops that run and uses an existing result for the viewer; this is a staged walkthrough, not an uninterrupted fresh-scene completion. Training is configured for 30,000 iterations, with a saved result at 7,000. The speaker reports roughly 30 to 45 minutes on his RTX 3090 Ti, rather than a general runtime guarantee. He states a 24 GB memory requirement and discusses possible training adjustments for smaller GPUs. The final section opens the trained output in a prebuilt SIBR viewer, covers navigation and cropping, and shows how scene quality deteriorates far from the captured camera positions.