Ray-tracing-based 3D Gaussian splatting (3DGS) methods overcome the limitations of rasterization -- rigid pinhole camera assumptions, inaccurate shadows, and lack of native reflection or refraction -- but remain slower due to the cost of sorting all intersecting Gaussians along every ray. Moreover, existing ray-tracing methods still rely on rasterization-style approximations such as shadow mapping for relightable scenes, undermining the generality that ray tracing promises.
We present a differentiable, sorting-free stochastic formulation for ray-traced 3DGS -- the first framework that uses stochastic ray tracing to both reconstruct and render standard and relightable 3DGS scenes. At its core is an unbiased Monte Carlo estimator for pixel-color gradients that evaluates only a small sampled subset of Gaussians per ray, bypassing the need for sorting. For standard 3DGS, our method matches the reconstruction quality and speed of rasterization-based 3DGS while substantially outperforming sorting-based ray tracing. For relightable 3DGS, the same stochastic estimator drives per-Gaussian shading with fully ray-traced shadow rays, delivering notably higher reconstruction fidelity than prior work.
A Mixed-Primitive-based Gaussian Splatting Method for Surface Reconstruction
Lancaster University, United Kingdom（兰卡斯特大学，英国）；The University of Queensland, Australia（昆士兰大学，澳大利亚）；The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, China（香港理工大学，中国）；University at Buffalo, United States of America（布法罗大学，美国）
PolGS: Polarimetric Gaussian Splatting for Fast Reflective Surface Reconstruction
Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications（北京邮电大学）；Xiong’an Aerospace Information Research Institute（雄安航空航天信息研究所）；State Key Laboratory of Multimedia Information Processing, School of Computer Science, Peking University（信息处理国家重点实验室，北京大学计算机学院）；National Engineering Research Center of Visual Technology, School of Computer Science, Peking University（视觉技术国家工程研究中心，北京大学计算机学院）
SolidGS: Consolidating Gaussian Surfel Splatting for Sparse-View Surface Reconstruction
Texas A&M University（德克萨斯农工大学）；OPPO US Research Center（OPPO美国研究中心）；Nanyang Technological University（南洋理工大学）；Hong Kong University of Science and Technology（香港科技大学）；The University of Hong Kong（香港大学）
SurgicalGS: Dynamic 3D Gaussian Splatting for Accurate Robotic-Assisted Surgical Scene Reconstruction
The Hamlyn Centre for Robotic Surgery, Imperial College London（伦敦帝国理工学院哈姆林 robotic外科中心）；Hawkes Institute, University College London（伦敦大学学院霍克斯研究所）；University of Liverpool（利物浦大学）
LGDWT-GS: Local and Global Discrete Wavelet-Regularized 3D Gaussian Splatting for Sparse-View Scene Reconstruction
National Institute of Standards and Technology（国家标准与技术研究院）；Department of Physics, Colorado State University（科罗拉多州立大学物理系）；Electrical Engineering Department, University of Colorado（科罗拉多大学电气工程系）
DGNS: Deformable Gaussian Splatting and Dynamic Neural Surface for Monocular Dynamic 3D Reconstruction
Industrial Research Organisation, Canberra, ACT Australia；College of Engineering Computing \& Cybernetics, The Australian National University, Canberra, ACT Australia；Faculty of Engineering, The University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong SAR China；Industrial Research Organisation；College of Engineering Computing \& Cybernetics, The Australian National University；Faculty of Engineering, The University of Hong Kong
GSurf: Learning Signed Distance Fields from Splatting Opaque Gaussians for High-quality 3D Reconstruction
College of Computing and Data Science, Nanyang Technological University（南洋理工大学计算与数据科学学院）；School of Software, Dalian University of Technology（大连理工大学软件学院）
3D Gaussian Splatting for Large-scale Surface Reconstruction from Aerial Images
School of Remote Sensing and Information Engineering, Wuhan University（武汉大学遥感信息工程学院）；School of Communication Engineering, Hangzhou Dianzi University（杭州电子科技大学通信工程学院）
Revisiting Photometric Ambiguity for Accurate Gaussian-Splatting Surface Reconstruction
School of Computer Science；Engineering, State Key Laboratory of Complex Critical \& Software Environment, Jiangxi Research Institute, Beihang University；State Key Laboratory of Virtual Reality Technology；Macquarie University；Tohoku University；School of Computing, National University of Singapore
RGBDS-SLAM: A RGB-D Semantic Dense SLAM Based on 3D Multi Level Pyramid Gaussian Splatting
Institute of Robotics and Automatic Information System, Nankai University（南开大学机器人与自动信息系统研究所）；Tianjin Key Laboratory of Intelligent Robotics（天津市智能机器人重点实验室）；TBI center, Nankai University（南开大学TBI中心）
Seeing Through Reflections: Advancing 3D Scene Reconstruction in Mirror-Containing Environments with Gaussian Splatting
School of Automation and Intelligent Sening, Shanghai Jiao Tong University（自动化与智能传感学院，上海交通大学）；Ningbo Artificial Intelligence Institute, Shanghai Jiao Tong University（宁波人工智能研究所，上海交通大学）
Comparative evaluation of photogrammetric reconstruction methods and 3D Gaussian Splatting for road surface roughness analysis
School of International Education, Hubei University of Technology（湖北工业大学国际教育学院）；School of Computer Science, Hubei University of Technology（湖北工业大学计算机科学学院）
AquaFlow: A Monocular Gaussian Splatting SLAM for Underwater Streaming Reconstruction
Zhejiang University（浙江大学）；Shanghai AI Laboratory（上海人工智能实验室）；Shanghai Jiao Tong University（上海交通大学）；Tsinghua University（清华大学）；The University of Hong Kong（香港大学）；The Chinese University of Hong Kong（香港中文大学）
