A simple Godot tool for loading and visualizing 3D Gaussian Splat point cloud data.

Live demo here!

• Load multiple point cloud formats:
  • PLY files (ASCII and binary, including 3DGS spherical harmonics)
  • SPLAT files (standard 32-byte and extended 56-byte formats)
  • XYZ files (simple point format)
• Drag-and-drop file loading
• Interactive orbit camera with pan, rotate, and zoom
• Distance-based point sizing with Gaussian falloff rendering
• Auto-centering and camera framing for any model size
• Asynchronous loading with progress reporting

1. Open the project in Godot Engine 4.6+
2. Run the project
3. Click "Load Splat File" or drag and drop a file onto the window
4. View the loaded point cloud in the 3D viewport

• Left Click + Drag: Rotate camera around the point cloud
• Shift + Left Click + Drag or Middle Mouse + Drag: Pan camera
• Mouse Wheel Up/Down: Zoom in/out

• W or Up Arrow: Zoom in
• S or Down Arrow: Zoom out
• R: Reset camera

• Load Splat File: Open file dialog to select a point cloud file
• Reset Camera: Reset camera to frame the loaded model (or default position)
• Clear: Remove the current point cloud from the scene

Standard PLY format with vertex data. Supports both ASCII and binary (little-endian) formats. Reads position (x, y, z) and color from either RGB properties or spherical harmonics DC coefficients (f_dc_0, f_dc_1, f_dc_2).

Binary format for 3D Gaussian Splats. Supports two variants:

• Standard (32 bytes): 3×f32 position, 3×f32 scale, 4×u8 RGBA color, 4×u8 rotation
• Extended (56 bytes): 14×f32 for position, scale, rotation, color, and opacity

Simple text format with space-separated values:

• Position only: x y z
• Position with color: x y z r g b
• Supports both normalized (0-1) and 0-255 color ranges

• Built with Godot 4.6
• Uses ArrayMesh with packed arrays for efficient point cloud rendering
• Custom spatial shader with distance-based point sizing and Gaussian falloff
• Bulk buffer reads for fast file loading
• Asynchronous loading with progress callbacks

• scripts/main.gd - Main application controller (UI, camera, rendering)
• scripts/splat_loader.gd - Point cloud file loader (PLY, SPLAT, XYZ)
• scenes/main.tscn - Main scene with UI layout
• tests/ - Example point cloud files and generator script

• Godot Engine 4.6 or later

The tests/ directory includes example files in all three formats:

• Spiral Galaxy (galaxy.splat, .ply, .xyz) - A spiral galaxy with dense core and sweeping arms
• DNA Double Helix (dna.splat, .ply, .xyz) - A DNA double helix with base pair connections
• Torus Knot (knot.splat, .ply, .xyz) - A trefoil torus knot with flowing HSV colors

Each contains 8,000 points with HSV color gradients.

Run the included Python script from the tests/ directory:

cd tests
python generate_example_splat.py

This generates all 9 example files (3 shapes × 3 formats).

1. Clone or download this project
2. Open project.godot in Godot Engine 4.6+
3. Run the project
4. Try loading the example files to test, or load your own point cloud files