Organizations: School of Electronics and Information, Northwestern Polytechnical University, Xi’an 710129, China · Department of Computer Science, City University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong SAR, China · School of Telecommunication Engineering, Xidian University, Xi’an 710071, China
3D Gaussian Splatting (3DGS) enables high-quality, real-time novel view synthesis but requires significant storage and transmission resources. Mapping Gaussian attributes to 2D representations enables efficient compression using mature image codecs. However, Gaussian representations that achieve comparable rendering quality are generally treated similarly during optimization, despite substantial differences in coding rate, leading to limited rate-distortion (R-D) performance after compression. To address this limitation, we propose RDCompGS, a 3DGS compression method that enables overall R-D optimization of Gaussian representations with respect to subsequent coding. A differentiable estimate of the coding rate is incorporated into the R-D optimization with rendering distortion. The rate constraint adjustment model further regulates the R-D trade-off across different compression conditions. Extensive experiments on three benchmark datasets demonstrate that RDCompGS achieves average Bjøntegaard Delta Rate reductions of 37.84% and 49.31% with H.265/HEVC and JPEG XL, respectively. The estimated rate also shows a strong correlation with the actual bit-rate under different compression conditions.
Figures & tables
Fig. 1: General pipeline for converting 3DGS into 2D representations and compressing them using image codecs.
Fig. 2: Overview of the proposed RDCompGS. To enable overall R-D optimization of Gaussian representations with respect to subsequent coding, RDCompGS first introduces differentiable rate estimation based on the distribution of transformed coefficients and their quantization probabilities. Then, the rate constraint adjustment model regulates the rate constraint across different compression conditions. Finally, the estimated rate and rendering distortion jointly guide Gaussian optimization for subsequent coding.
Fig. 3: Spatial correlation comparison between a natural image and Gaussian attribute grids on the Truck scene. (a) Natural image; (b) and (c) scale attribute grids without and with RDCompGS, respectively; (d), (e), and (f) spatial correlation maps of (a), (b), and (c), respectively. Spatial correlation is calculated within a 21×21 window by averaging the horizontal and vertical Pearson correlations, with gray to blue indicating increasing correlation. The scale attribute shows lower spatial correlation than the natural image, while higher correlation is observed with RDCompGS.
Fig. 4: Laplace distribution fitting of DCT coefficients for opacity and SH DC component during training on the Truck scene.
Fig. 5: R-D performance comparison on the Truck scene under H.265/HEVC compression between Gaussian optimization without the rate constraint and with the rate constraint using λrate=1×10−7 at QP values of 4, 10, 16, and 22.
Dataset
Method
Distance = 0.1005
Distance = 0.2157
Distance = 0.4511
Distance = 0.9363
BD-Rate (%) ↓
Size
PSNR
SSIM
LPIPS
Size
PSNR
SSIM
LPIPS
Size
PSNR
SSIM
LPIPS
Size
PSNR
SSIM
LPIPS
Tanks & Temples (Train)
SOG
14.828
21.54
0.794
0.231
11.343
21.36
0.791
0.238
7.779
20.78
0.778
0.250
6.896
20.25
0.766
0.257
-30.44
RDCompGS
16.194
21.73
0.796
0.235
10.488
21.50
0.791
0.241
6.321
21.06
0.779
0.252
4.079
20.70
0.758
0.274
Deep Blending
SOG
12.175
29.22
0.891
0.276
8.969
28.93
0.889
0.280
6.338
28.15
0.882
0.288
5.845
27.68
0.879
0.292
-60.94
RDCompGS
11.623
29.52
0.898
0.271
7.185
29.32
0.895
0.273
4.562
29.20
0.889
0.282
3.136
28.63
0.879
0.299
Mip-NeRF 360
SOG
37.140
26.82
0.797
0.235
28.136
26.53
0.793
0.244
19.073
25.62
0.776
0.261
16.933
24.88
0.762
0.271
-56.55
TABLE I: R-D performance of RDCompGS using JPEG XL compared with SOG. Size is measured in MB and PSNR in dB.
Dataset
Method
QP = 4
QP = 10
QP = 16
QP = 22
BD-Rate (%) ↓
Size
PSNR
SSIM
LPIPS
Size
PSNR
SSIM
LPIPS
Size
PSNR
SSIM
LPIPS
Size
PSNR
SSIM
LPIPS
Tanks & Temples (Train)
SOG
14.828
21.54
0.794
0.231
11.343
21.36
0.791
0.238
7.779
20.78
0.778
0.250
6.896
20.25
0.766
0.257
-15.44
RDCompGS
16.451
21.57
0.795
0.237
11.180
21.24
0.785
0.244
6.886
21.04
0.776
0.255
4.645
20.51
0.753
0.279
Deep Blending
SOG
12.175
29.22
0.891
0.276
8.969
28.93
0.889
0.280
6.338
28.15
0.882
0.288
5.845
27.68
0.879
0.292
-50.48
RDCompGS
11.554
29.46
0.897
0.271
7.603
29.25
0.895
0.275
4.846
29.04
0.888
0.283
3.417
28.36
0.876
0.307
Mip-NeRF 360
SOG
37.140
26.82
0.797
0.235
28.136
26.53
0.793
0.244
19.073
25.62
0.776
0.261
16.933
24.88
0.762
0.271
-47.61
TABLE II: R-D performance of RDCompGS using H.265/HEVC compared with SOG. Size is measured in MB and PSNR in dB.
Fig. 6: R-D performance comparison between SOG and RDCompGS compressed using JPEG XL on three benchmark datasets in terms of PSNR, SSIM, and LPIPS.
Fig. 7: Visual comparison on the Train, Playroom, and Bonsai scenes, where RDCompGS is compressed using JPEG XL. Each row shows GT, 3DGS, SOG, and RDCompGS from left to right, with the same local region enlarged for comparison.
Fig. 8: Estimated rate and actual bit-rate produced by H.265/HEVC at different QP values. Each point corresponds to one Gaussian attribute image.
Fig. 9: R-D curves on the Truck scene for different λref values. The selected value λref=1×10−7 achieves a favorable R-D trade-off according to the observed trend of the curves.
Fig. 10: BD-Rate comparison of different β values on the Truck scene under H.265/HEVC compression.
Dataset
Method
QP = 4
QP = 10
QP = 16
QP = 22
BD-Rate (%) ↓
Size
PSNR
SSIM
LPIPS
Size
PSNR
SSIM
LPIPS
Size
PSNR
SSIM
LPIPS
Size
PSNR
SSIM
LPIPS
Tanks & Temples (Train)
LightGaussian
15.367
21.52
0.780
0.238
12.431
21.46
0.776
0.241
9.692
21.24
0.767
0.251
7.088
20.67
0.736
0.283
-38.83
Ours
14.657
21.52
0.781
0.237
10.983
21.47
0.778
0.240
7.012
21.34
0.768
0.251
3.868
20.76
0.743
0.278
Deep Blending
LightGaussian
36.044
29.76
0.898
0.256
29.350
29.72
0.897
0.257
23.069
29.57
0.894
0.262
17.042
29.06
0.883
0.277
-67.19
Ours
25.096
29.95
0.902
0.254
13.073
29.86
0.901
0.257
7.861
29.63
0.897
0.265
5.731
28.96
0.885
0.285
Mip-NeRF 360
LightGaussian
39.069
26.65
0.789
0.232
31.674
26.54
0.786
0.236
24.776
26.21
0.776
0.247
18.223
25.38
0.749
0.276
-54.54
TABLE III: R-D performance comparison with LightGaussian under H.265/HEVC compression. Here, Ours denotes RDCompGS with the pruning strategy proposed in LightGaussian. Size is measured in MB and PSNR in dB.
Dataset
BD-Rate (%) ↓
BD-PSNR (dB) ↑
Tanks & Temples (Train)
-53.28
0.63
Deep Blending
-62.32
0.88
Mip-NeRF 360
-56.09
1.18
TABLE IV: Ablation of differentiable rate estimation under H.265/HEVC compression, using Gaussian optimization without the estimated rate term as the reference.
Dataset
BD-Rate (%) ↓
BD-PSNR (dB) ↑
Tanks & Temples (Train)
0.77
0.00
Deep Blending
-0.59
0.02
Mip-NeRF 360
-5.46
0.25
TABLE V: Comparison of the rate constraint adjustment model with the use of a single rate constraint under H.265/HEVC compression, using the latter as the reference.
3D Gaussian Splatting (3DGS) achieves high-quality novel view synthesis with real-time rendering, but its storage cost remains prohibitive for practical deployment. Existing post-training compression methods still rely on many coupled hyperparameters across pruning, transformation, quantization, and entropy coding, making it difficult to control the final compressed size and fully exploit the rate-distortion trade-off. We propose MesonGS++, a size-aware post-training codec for 3D Gaussian compression. On the codec side, MesonGS++ combines joint importance-based pruning, octree geometry coding, attribute transformation, selective vector quantization for higher-degree spherical harmonics, and group-wise mixed-precision quantization with entropy coding. On the configuration side, it treats the reserve ratio and bit-width allocation as the dominant rate-distortion knobs and jointly optimizes them under a target storage budget via discrete sampling and 0--1 integer linear programming. We further propose a linear size estimator and a CUDA parallel quantization operator to accelerate the hyperparameter searching process. Extensive experiments show that MesonGS++ achieves over 34× compression while preserving rendering fidelity, outperforming state-of-the-art post-training methods and accurately meeting target size budgets. Remarkably, without any training, MesonGS++ can even surpass the PSNR of vanilla 3DGS at a 20× compression rate on the Stump scene. Our code is available at https://github.com/mmlab-sigs/mesongs_plus
Shuzhao Xie, Junchen Ge, Weixiang Zhang +10
Shenzhen International Graduate School, Tsinghua University, Shenzhen, China · The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, Hong Kong SAR, China · Harbin Institute of Technology, Shenzhen, China +6
3D Gaussian Splatting (3DGS) enables high-quality novel view synthesis but incurs high storage and transmission costs due to dense Gaussian primitives. Recent anchor-based compression reduces per-primitive redundancy, yet redundancy across anchors remains largely unexploited. We propose CRP-GS (Cross-Representation Priors for Gaussian Splatting), a rate-distortion optimized compression framework that leverages cross-representation priors to improve anchor-level entropy modeling. First, a Correspondence-Oriented Hierarchical Structure (COHS) organizes anchors by feature correspondence rather than spatial proximity, constructing root-leaf dependencies so that selected anchors can act as informative priors to conditionally encode others, yielding more accurate likelihood prediction and lower conditional entropy. Second, Shared Feature Aggregation (SFA) extracts globally shared features from a contextual hash grid and injects them into anchor representations, factoring out scene-consistent low-frequency information that would otherwise be redundantly embedded in individual anchors. Both modules are trained under a unified rate-distortion objective to balance bitrate reduction and rendering fidelity. Experiments across multiple benchmarks show that CRP-GS achieves a favorable overall rate-distortion trade-off, yielding around 30% average bitrate reduction compared to anchor-based baselines while maintaining comparable rendering quality.
Yezheng Zhang, Huanxiong Liang, Chuqin Zhou +2
Institute of Image Communication and Network Engineering, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai 200240, China
3D Gaussian Splatting (3DGS) enables high-quality novel-view synthesis but requires substantial storage. Existing compression methods often rely on spatial context modeling over irregular 3D representations, increasing the complexity of training and coding. Meanwhile, floating-point context inference can introduce numerical inconsistencies across platforms, causing entropy-decoding failures. To address these practical challenges, we propose COSA-GS, which constructs context without spatial aggregation through anchor-wise causal factorization. Specifically, we use geometry context derived from each anchor's coordinates to model a compact learnable anchor latent. The anchor latent is then fused with the geometry context to form an anchor context for attribute coding. The resulting context model features a simple architecture composed solely of linear transformations and activations. We train COSA-GS using rate--distortion optimization with adaptive Gaussian pruning. Further, we develop quantization-aware training and integer inference for the context model to achieve bit-exact consistency of entropy-decoded symbols across platforms. Experiments demonstrate that COSA-GS achieves state-of-the-art compression performance while retaining fast and consistent cross-platform decoding, providing a simple yet effective framework for practical 3DGS compression. Code is available at https://github.com/pengpeng-yu/COSA-GS.
Pengpeng Yu, Yueru Chen, Fei Song +4
Sun Yat-sen University, China · Pengcheng Laboratory, China · Academy of Broadcasting Science, National Radio and Television Administration, China +1