Lessons

A Gaussian splat is a 3D scene made of nothing but soft, see-through, coloured blobs. Start with one, learn what each of its numbers does, pile up thousands, then give them bones and make them walk.

Part 1: One object

What a blob is, and how thousands of them make a thing you can look at from anywhere.

1. One blob

   Five kinds of number, 14 in all, make one Gaussian. Pull each one and see what it does.

2. Footprint

   A 3D blob lands on screen as a 2D ellipse. Orbit it and watch the shadow it casts change.

3. Order matters

   See-through blobs only blend right when drawn back to front. Draw them in the wrong order.

4. Many make a shape

   From one blob to twenty thousand: when does a pile of blobs become a solid object?

5. Colour by angle

   A blob that changes colour as you walk round it, and how many numbers that takes.

6. Paint

   Spray blobs onto the floor by hand, and trade blob size against how many you need.

7. Splat files

   The same scene saved three ways: what a splat file holds, and how small it can get.

8. Break it

   Shrink every blob to a dot, blow the scene apart, and put it back exactly.

Part 2: Rigs and 3D models

Bones that move blobs, a walk cycle, and a creature that leaves as a model Blender opens.

9. One bone

   A bone moves blobs it never touches. Bend a caterpillar and find out which ones follow.

10. Weights

    Bend an arm and the elbow tears. Fix it without moving a bone.

11. Twist without tearing

    Turn a wrist over two ways, and see why one of them squashes the blobs flat.

12. Walk cycle

    Four poses and some timing make a walk. Find the ones that matter, and stop the feet sliding.

13. Blobs to a model

    Save the walking fox as splats and as a solid mesh, and see what each one keeps.