Butian Xiong1* Rong Liu1* Tiantian Zhou1
Meida Chen1 Zhiwen Fan2 Andrew Feng1

*Co-first authors

1USC Institute for Creative Technologies 2Texas A&M University
Teaser

NanoGS achieves substantial simplification ratios while preserving fidelity and geometry—without post-optimization or calibrated images.

Abstract

3D Gaussian Splat (3DGS) enables high-fidelity, real-time novel view synthesis by representing scenes with large sets of anisotropic primitives, but often requires millions of Splats, incurring significant storage and transmission costs. Most existing compression methods rely on GPU-intensive post-training optimization with calibrated images, limiting practical deployment. We introduce NanoGS, a training-free and lightweight framework for Gaussian Splat simplification. Instead of relying on image-based rendering supervision, NanoGS formulates simplification as local pairwise merging over a sparse spatial graph. The method approximates a pair of Gaussians with a single primitive using mass preserved moment matching and evaluates merge quality through a principled merge cost between the original mixture and its approximation. By restricting merge candidates to local neighborhoods and selecting compatible pairs efficiently, NanoGS produces compact Gaussian representations while preserving scene structure and appearance. NanoGS operates directly on existing Gaussian Splat models, runs efficiently on CPU, and preserves the standard 3DGS parameterization, enabling seamless integration with existing rendering pipelines. Experiments demonstrate that NanoGS substantially reduces primitive count while maintaining high rendering fidelity, providing an efficient and practical solution for Gaussian Splat simplification.

Real-World Splat Simplification

10%

Synthetic Splat Simplification

10%

Generated Splat Simplification

30%

References

  1. LightGaussian: Unbounded 3D Gaussian Compression with 15x Reduction and 200+ FPS, NeurIPS 2024.
  2. PUP 3D-GS: Principled Uncertainty Pruning for 3D Gaussian Splatting, CVPR 2025.
  3. Gaussian Herding across Pens: An Optimal Transport Perspective on Global Gaussian Reduction for 3DGS, NeurIPS 2025.

BibTeX

@misc{xiong2026nanogstrainingfreegaussiansplat,
      title={NanoGS: Training-Free Gaussian Splat Simplification}, 
      author={Butian Xiong and Rong Liu and Tiantian Zhou and Meida Chen and Zhiwen Fan and Andrew Feng},
      year={2026},
      eprint={2603.16103},
      archivePrefix={arXiv},
      primaryClass={cs.CV},
      url={https://arxiv.org/abs/2603.16103}, 
}