Digital Twins are becoming increasingly important in fields such as heritage visualisation, virtual production, immersive training, and interactive cultural experiences. However, creating photorealistic 3D environments often requires expensive scanning workflows, specialised expertise, and time-intensive production pipelines. SPLATit! investigates how emerging Gaussian Splatting technology can lower these barriers while maintaining visual quality and real-time performance.
The project focuses on analysing the current state of the art in Gaussian Splatting tools and workflows, followed by the development of practical and user-friendly production pipelines for different application domains. These workflows are tested through three concrete use cases: a virtual production environment for film and media, an interactive VR training scenario, and a virtual concert venue for cultural experiences.
Alongside workflow development, SPLATit! also addresses several important technical challenges that currently limit the broader adoption of Gaussian Splatting in real-world applications. These include dynamic relighting of scanned environments, the generation of collision data for interactive experiences, and hybrid workflows that combine Gaussian Splats with generative AI techniques for scene creation.
A central goal of the project is accessibility. SPLATit! aims to enable not only game developers and technical artists, but also educators, cultural organisations, researchers, and non-technical creators to produce high-quality 3D content using affordable consumer hardware such as smartphones and drones.
The project is particularly relevant for small and medium-sized studios working in virtual production or XR, museums and heritage institutions looking to digitise locations, educational institutions using Digital Twins for research and teaching, and creators experimenting with immersive media production.
The outcome of SPLATit! will include documented workflows, best practices, technical insights, and knowledge-sharing activities such as workshops and presentations. By openly sharing these results with both industry and education, the project contributes to a broader adoption of accessible immersive technologies and helps lower the threshold for photorealistic 3D creation.