Best Practices for Gaussian Splats

The Gaussian Splatting for SketchUp extension allows you to import, view, and manage Gaussian Splat files directly inside your models. To generate a splat, you must use a dedicated third-party tool. There are mobile apps that can help you scan a space for smaller spaces, web-based tools that utilize AI along with your existing hardware, or professional platforms that use drones to scan larger spaces. 

The quality of your final Gaussian Splat depends on the quality of your source material. Follow these best practices for capturing, generating, and utilizing splats for optimal performance and accuracy within SketchUp.

Capture Guidelines

Whether you are using a mobile app, drone, or professional scanner, adhering to the following capture techniques will significantly improve your results:

• Lighting – Maintain consistent lighting throughout your capture session. Overcast conditions are ideal for outdoor capture because diffuse cloud cover produces even, shadow-free lighting. For interiors, close blinds to prevent bright patches that can interfere with the reconstruction.

• Camera Movement – Move slowly and steadily. Fast or jerky movements blur source frames and introduce errors. Walk the perimeter of your subject and capture from multiple heights to give the algorithm complete coverage.

• Frame Overlap – Aim for at least 70% to 80% overlap between consecutive frames. When recording video, slow, sweeping movements naturally provide sufficient overlap.

• Surfaces  – Avoid highly reflective or transparent surfaces, such as mirrors and glass, as these are difficult to reconstruct reliably. Flat, textureless surfaces can also cause mapping issues, so consider adding temporary texture markers to the environment before scanning.

Choosing the Right Tools and Hardware

Select a capture device and generation tool that matches the scale and precision of your project:

• Interiors and Small Objects – Phones with built-in LiDAR are best for interior spaces where close-range depth accuracy matters. Mobile apps like Scaniverse or Polycam deliver reliable results with minimal setup.

• Large Environments – Drones are ideal for exterior site contexts, rooftops, and large environments that require overhead coverage.

• Hardware Constraints – If you do not have a dedicated NVIDIA graphics card to process splats locally, use web-based cloud tools like Luma AI to process your uploaded images or video.

Preparing Your Splat for Import

Most raw splat exports include floating artifacts or background clutter that can negatively affect performance and appearance inside SketchUp. Use a browser-based editor or a desktop tool designed for working with splats to select and delete unwanted artifacts. After cleaning up your splat file, crop the scene to focus purely on your area of interest before exporting. Make sure the tool you use to edit your splat exports to a supported format like .ply, .splat, or .spz.

Best Practices Inside SketchUp

Once you import your splat into SketchUp, utilize the specialized extension tools to optimize your modeling workflow:

• Manage Display Performance – Large splat files affect your system's performance. Use the Gaussian Splatting Manager to change the Viewport Display mode to Point Cloud Mode for faster navigation, or Modeling Mode to disable blending and improve performance.

• Clean Up Visuals – If your splat still contains unwanted artifacts, click Crop () to display a bounding box and isolate your specific area of interest. You can also adjust the Opacity Threshold in the Gaussian Splatting Manager to remove blurry, low-opacity splats.
• Correct the Scale – Third-party tools frequently export splats at an arbitrary scale. Click Rescale () on the toolbar, pick two points on the splat, and enter the correct real-world length to accurately scale the environment to your SketchUp model.

• Save Your Modifications – SketchUp does not store Gaussian Splat modifications directly inside the standard SketchUp geometry. To keep your changes you must manually Save in the Splat Manager. This creates a linked .sklat file. If you want to share what you’ve done with Gaussian Splats in SketchUp you must share both the .skp and .sklat files together for collaborators to view your work.