(Available from version 2026.1 Alpha3 - 26.01)
References:
Octane 2026.1 Alpha 1: viewtopic.php?t=84311
2026.1 Alpha 3: viewtopic.php?t=84831
Gaussian splats can capture complex lighting effects such as reflections and refraction that change depending on the viewing angle.
Octane supports loading .PLY files that contain Gaussian splatting data which can be produced from a set of images in software such as NeRF Studio or Polycam or the new LumaLabs AI services being added to Render Network.
Gaussian splatting typically assumes black background so to make it look correctly you will need to:
Disable the environment lighting
Enable alpha channel in kernel settings. Add an output AOV layer with black color to serve as a background.
Performance of ray-traced Gaussian splatting is slower than rasterization based approaches, however it comes with all the benefits of ray-tracing e.g. Gaussian splats are visible in reflections and refraction and can illuminate scene objects and cast shadows on them.
To improve rendering time consider making use of adaptive sampling and enabling sub-sampling in the viewport navigation tools.
Current limitations:
Gaussian splats are always rendered on top of volumes
Can't receive shadows from the regular scene geometry (but regular scene geometry can receive shadows from gaussian splats)
Render layers are not fully supported
Network rendering is not supported
To use Gaussian splats on 3dsMax:
Create a Gaussian Splat object from the Octane category.
- Create Octane Gaussian Splat object.png (9.24 KiB) Viewed 29 times
Select a .PLY file with the 'PLY file...' button
Open Octane viewport to check the rendering.
Adjust the object parameters
- Octane Gaussian Splat object.png (8.48 KiB) Viewed 29 times
There are new 2 render passes (AOVs) for Gaussian splats:
'Gaussian splats' (beauty)
'Gaussian splat info'. This AOV is less noisy than the beauty Gaussian splat AOV, but doesn't support lighting/shadows.
Here are some examples:
GaussianSplat_Sample01_Cactus.max
GaussianSplat_Sample02_Sydney.max
https://www.diverseshot.com/blog/3d-gaussian-splatting-flies-examples
https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fo/jvjc50zpdp65azkp8agfc/ACoe88ifm83Dp3HFyjei7-s?rlkey=4h715pukehhjs1zrynq53ysjc&e=1&st=i34ixf2t&dl=0