Aug 2026· Applied Sciences· Vol 16, pp. 8464· 0 citations· 22 references
TL;DR
A unified multi-axis taxonomy is introduced that enables us to classify the available methods in 3D Gaussian splatting methods in terms of five complementary categories: semantic vocabulary space, representation form, functional role, knowledge source, and query mechanism.
Abstract
3D Gaussian splatting (3DGS) has recently emerged as an efficient and scalable method for high-fidelity 3D scene reconstruction, representation, and real-time rendering. In addition to geometric reconstruction, increasing research attention focuses on enriching 3D Gaussian primitives with semantic information, which can be related to an arbitrary application or domain, as well as common knowledge. However, the existing approaches to semantic 3DGS significantly differ in how semantics are represented, learned, and accessed, which makes systematic analysis difficult. This paper provides a review on semantic extensions to 3DGS. We introduce a unified multi-axis taxonomy that enables us to classify the available methods in terms of five complementary categories: semantic vocabulary space, representation form, functional role, knowledge source, and query mechanism. The analysis reveals key design trade-offs related to the flexibility, efficiency, and semantic expressiveness of the methods. Furthermore, we review datasets, benchmarks, and evaluation metrics used in the field, indicating the diversity of approaches and the lack of common evaluation frameworks. Based on this analysis, we also identify open challenges and possible future research directions. The presented survey is relevant to advances in games and immersive technologies, where semantically enriched real-time 3D representations are essential for interactive environments, AR/VR, and intelligent scene understanding. The systematic analysis presented in this survey aims to facilitate a deeper understanding of semantic 3DGS and support the development of more general, efficient, and task-aware 3D scene understanding systems.
3D Gaussian splatting (3DGS) provides an efficient and expressive scene representation by jointly modeling spatial geometry and appearance, which has led to significant advances in high-fidelity scene reconstruction and novel view synthesis. However, in real-world environments, occlusions from pedestrians or equipment often introduce blurriness, artifacts, and geometric distortions. To address these challenges, this paper proposes a robust 3DGS modeling method enhanced by semantic and geometric consistency. First, the self-supervised foundation model DINOv2 is utilized to extract high-dimensional semantic features, leveraging its superior generalization capabilities to assist in identifying potential dynamic regions. Second, monocular depth estimation and a depth residual mechanism are introduced to construct geometric consistency constraints, enabling the precise localization of areas that violate static assumptions. Finally, a progressive guided probability masking mechanism is designed; it employs an adaptive sigmoid function to achieve a ‘coarse-to-fine’ soft-constraint optimization, effectively mitigating the training instability inherent in traditional binary hard masks. Experimental results on the neural radiance fields (NeRF)-on-the-go, RobustNeRF, and self-collected datasets demonstrate that the proposed method effectively suppresses dynamic artifacts and improves reconstruction quality. The proposed approach achieves competitive or superior performance compared with 3DGS, SpotLessSplats, T-3DGS, and RobustSplat on standard image-quality metrics, including peak signal-to-noise ratio, structural similarity index measure, and learned perceptual image patch similarity.
Wen Zheng, Guo Bao, Wenda Wang et al.· Engineering Research Express· 0 citations
ZeroSplat lifts 2D Vision-Language Model priors into 3D space through robust multi-view geometric constraints and enables intrinsic point-level understanding without incurring any additional feature storage, and significantly outperforms state-of-the-art methods across generalized and single-target scenarios while maintaining exceptional efficiency.
Jiayu Ding, Meilu Song, Xiaoyi Zhang et al.· 1 citation
Fine-grained control over continuous semantic attributes of 3D objects is essential for 3D content creation, but is not well supported by conventional 3D modeling workflows or prompt-based interaction with existing generative AI tools. While slider-based methods have proven effective for fine-grained semantic control in 2D image generation, no equivalent approach exists for 3D. Extending these 2D methods to 3D is non-trivial due to challenges unique to 3D, including geometric integrity and cross-view coherence. We present SemanticSlider3D, a technique for continuous semantic attribute editing of 3D objects that requires no per-attribute training. Given a user-specified attribute, our pipeline constructs a semantic editing direction in the latent space of a state-of-the-art 3D generation model, presenting a diverse and coherent spectrum of 3D variations. A technical validation on a dataset of 50 3D object-attribute pairs shows our method was preferred by all five human assessors across variation range, consistency, 3D object quality, and attribute disentanglement, over a baseline combining a 2D slider with an image-to-3D model. An exploratory study with six participants demonstrates that SemanticSlider3D supported decision-making in 3D prototyping and was perceived as a valuable addition to existing workflows.
Ru Wang, Rahul Jain, Koichiro Niinuma et al.· 0 citations
Recent advances in 3D Gaussian Splatting (3DGS) have significantly advanced indoor scene reconstruction, a key capability for AR/VR, robotics, and autonomous systems. However, existing methods that rely on 2D monocular priors often produce artifacts such as holes and unnatural protrusions due to insufficient or weak constraints. To address this limitation, we propose a geometry-semantics co-regularization framework that jointly optimizes geometry and semantics within 3DGS. On the geometric side, we introduce a multi-level geometric optimization strategy with two key contributions. First, inspired by neural implicit surface representations, we design a dual implicit architecture that integrates Implicit Moving Least Squares (IMLS) and Signed Distance Functions (SDFs). This structure enables mutual reinforcement between the two representations via local geometric approximation and global normal constraints, improving fine-grained surface modeling. Second, we develop a view-dependent normal consistency constraint that combines 2D observations with SDF gradients to refine surface accuracy. On the semantic side, we develop a multi-view semantic consistency supervision to regularize the semantic distributions of Gaussian primitives, ensuring cross-view consistency for Gaussians corresponding to the same semantic category or instance. Extensive experiments on the Replica and MuSHRoom datasets demonstrate that our approach achieves state-of-the-art geometric reconstruction quality and rendering fidelity. Check out the project page https://sgo-gauss.github.io for the source code and more results.
Haihong Xiao, Jianan Zou, Yanan Zhang et al.· IEEE Transactions on Visuali...· 0 citations
A modular mapping architecture is demonstrated that establishes 3D Semantic Scene Graphs (3DSSGs) as its foundational back-end, enabling the dense representation of extensive environments containing thousands of unique object instances and supporting open-vocabulary queries via CLIP features without requiring any additional post-processing steps.
F. Igelbrink, Lennart Niecksch, Martin G. ̈unther et al.· 0 citations
A semantic-guided 3D Gaussian splatting (3DGS) framework tailored to sparse-view industrial reconstruction was introduced, enabling robust reconstruction from limited viewpoints and offers a practical geometric foundation for automated inspection and remote equipment monitoring.
Boyang Li, Tianhan Gao, Zuan Gu et al.· Visual Computing for Industr...· 0 citations
