Research map / 3D vision / Gaussian splatting
RainyGS: Efficient Rain Synthesis with Physically-Based Gaussian Splatting
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Adds physically-based dynamic rain (raindrops, splashes, puddle shallow-water dynamics, reflections and refractions) to 3D Gaussian Splatting reconstructions of in-the-wild scenes, rendering above 30 fps.
Problem
Adding photorealistic, physically accurate dynamic rain effects to in-the-wild scenes is hard for NeRF/3DGS methods, which are built for novel view synthesis, and for physics simulations, which need skilled artists and are slow.
Approach
Reconstruct the scene with PGSR, then simulate water accumulation on a height map with shallow-water equations and render raindrops, splashes, specular reflections, refractions and highlights via screen-space ray tracing inside a fast Gaussian Splatting rasterization pipeline.
Key results
- Rain synthesis runs at 0.032 s per frame (over 30 fps) on the Garden scene, versus 1.942 s per frame for PGSR with ray tracing and about 0.4 s for Runway-V2V.
- Peak video memory is 8.561 GB, close to the 7.989 GB of plain PGSR and well below the 14.161 GB of PGSR with ray tracing.
- Qualitative comparisons show RainyGS keeps 3D consistency across views, where Runway-V2V changes scene geometry, and produces time-evolving puddles and ripples.
Measured effects reported in the paper
| What was changed | Where | Measured | Effect |
|---|---|---|---|
| Add RainyGS rain synthesis to PGSR | PGSR · Garden | Time Per Frame: 0.007 s -> 0.032 s | Hurt |
| Add RainyGS rain synthesis to PGSR | PGSR · Garden | Peak Video Memory: 7.989 GB -> 8.561 GB | Hurt |
| Add screen-space specular reflection (ablation) | RainyGS · Rainy scene rendering | visual realism | Helped |
| Add glossy highlights (ablation) | RainyGS · Rainy scene rendering | visual realism | Helped |
| Add refraction (ablation) | RainyGS · Rainy scene rendering | visual realism | Helped |
| Add the Fresnel term (ablation) | RainyGS · Rainy scene rendering | visual realism | Helped |
| Add flying streaks (ablation) | RainyGS · Rainy scene rendering | visual realism | Helped |
Limitations
- Shallow-water dynamics are inaccurate for deep waves and multi-depth water, such as interactions with submerged surfaces.
- Image-space rendering means occluded objects cannot be refracted or reflected.
- Relies on accurate scene reconstruction; limited input views can produce irregular ground geometry and spurious water patches.
Experimental setup
Datasets: MipNeRF360 Tanks and Temples Waymo
Benchmarks: MipNeRF360 scenes (Garden, Treehill, Bicycle) Tanks and Temples (Family, Truck) Waymo driving scenes
Metrics: time per frame peak video memory
Baselines: Rain Motion Runway Gen-3 Alpha V2V Instruct-GS2GS PGSR + ray tracing
Builds on: 3D Gaussian Splatting PGSR shallow water simulation (Chentanez and Müller) PhysGaussian Gaussian Splashing
Closest papers by meaning
- DeRainGS: Gaussian Splatting for Enhanced Scene Reconstruction in Rainy Environments (AAAI 2025 · similarity 0.91)
- HybridGS: Decoupling Transients and Statics with 2D and 3D Gaussian Splatting (CVPR 2025 · similarity 0.85)
- Gaussian Splashing: Unified Particles for Versatile Motion Synthesis and Rendering (CVPR 2025 · similarity 0.85)
- FlashGS: Efficient 3D Gaussian Splatting for Large-scale and High-resolution Rendering (CVPR 2025 · similarity 0.85)
- WildGaussians: 3D Gaussian Splatting In the Wild (NeurIPS 2024 · similarity 0.85)
- Steepest Descent Density Control for Compact 3D Gaussian Splatting (CVPR 2025 · similarity 0.84)
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