Relightable Gaussian Splatting for Virtual Production Using Image-Based Illumination

Fuente: arXiv
Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Azzarelli, Adrian, Anantrasirichai, Nantheera, Pollock, James, Bull, David R.
Format: Preprint
Published: 2026
Subjects:
Online Access:
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
_version_ 1866909029854347264
author Azzarelli, Adrian
Anantrasirichai, Nantheera
Pollock, James
Bull, David R.
author_facet Azzarelli, Adrian
Anantrasirichai, Nantheera
Pollock, James
Bull, David R.
contents Virtual production (VP) use LED walls to provide both background imagery and image-based lighting. While this enables on-set compositing, it couples lighting to background and scene appearance, limiting flexibility for downstream editing. In addition, inverse rendering conventionally relies on physically-based rendering to estimates 3D geometry and lighting, using environment maps. However, these maps are typically low-resolution and assume far-field lighting. In VP, with near-field and high-resolution image-based lighting, this can lead to inaccuracies and introduce complexities when editing. Addressing this, we propose a VP-specific framework for 3D reconstruction and relighting using Gaussian Splatting. This uses the known background imagery to condition the relighting process. This avoids relying on environment maps and reduces compositing to a background-image editing task. To realize our framework, we introduce a process (and associated dataset) that captures real VP scenes under varying background content and illumination conditions. This data is used to decompose a 3D scene into fixed appearance and variable lighting components. The variable lighting process simulates light transport by parameterizing each primitive with a UV coordinate, intensity value and resolution modifier. Using mipmaps, these directly sample the background texture in image space - implicitly capturing reflections and refractions without physically-based rendering. Combined with the fixed appearance component, this allows us to render relit scenes using a Gaussian Splatting rasterizer. Compared to baselines, our approach achieves higher-quality 3D reconstruction and controllable relighting. The method is efficient (<3 GB RAM, <5 GB VRAM, <2 hours training, ~35 FPS) and supports rendering useful arbitrary output variables including depth, lighting intensity, lighting color, and unlit renders.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2605_09024
institution arXiv
publishDate 2026
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Relightable Gaussian Splatting for Virtual Production Using Image-Based Illumination
Azzarelli, Adrian
Anantrasirichai, Nantheera
Pollock, James
Bull, David R.
Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition
Graphics
Multimedia
Image and Video Processing
Virtual production (VP) use LED walls to provide both background imagery and image-based lighting. While this enables on-set compositing, it couples lighting to background and scene appearance, limiting flexibility for downstream editing. In addition, inverse rendering conventionally relies on physically-based rendering to estimates 3D geometry and lighting, using environment maps. However, these maps are typically low-resolution and assume far-field lighting. In VP, with near-field and high-resolution image-based lighting, this can lead to inaccuracies and introduce complexities when editing. Addressing this, we propose a VP-specific framework for 3D reconstruction and relighting using Gaussian Splatting. This uses the known background imagery to condition the relighting process. This avoids relying on environment maps and reduces compositing to a background-image editing task. To realize our framework, we introduce a process (and associated dataset) that captures real VP scenes under varying background content and illumination conditions. This data is used to decompose a 3D scene into fixed appearance and variable lighting components. The variable lighting process simulates light transport by parameterizing each primitive with a UV coordinate, intensity value and resolution modifier. Using mipmaps, these directly sample the background texture in image space - implicitly capturing reflections and refractions without physically-based rendering. Combined with the fixed appearance component, this allows us to render relit scenes using a Gaussian Splatting rasterizer. Compared to baselines, our approach achieves higher-quality 3D reconstruction and controllable relighting. The method is efficient (<3 GB RAM, <5 GB VRAM, <2 hours training, ~35 FPS) and supports rendering useful arbitrary output variables including depth, lighting intensity, lighting color, and unlit renders.
title Relightable Gaussian Splatting for Virtual Production Using Image-Based Illumination
topic Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition
Graphics
Multimedia
Image and Video Processing
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2605.09024