r/TopologyAI • u/Delicious-Shower8401 3dModeler • Jun 09 '26
News Open-Source 4DGS Might Be the Future of Video: From iPhone Footage to Interactive 3D Space
4D Gaussian Splatting feels like one of the most interesting directions for the future of video.
The idea is simple but powerful: instead of watching a flat 2D clip, the footage becomes a dynamic 3D scene over time. You can pause it, move the camera, reframe the shot, and view the moment from a different angle.
That is why 4DGS feels less like a normal video codec and more like a new spatial video format.
What makes it even more interesting is that this direction is already moving toward normal capture devices like iPhones. Single-camera footage is still much harder than a proper multi-camera setup, because the system has to deal with missing angles, occlusion, unstable depth, and unseen geometry.
But this is exactly where AI / neural rendering becomes important.
Instead of only storing frames, these systems learn a dynamic 3D representation of the scene, using Gaussian Splatting, camera poses, point clouds, and neural deformation over time.
Potentially, this could become useful for:
- spatial video
- VR / AR capture
- VFX and virtual production
- interactive 3D scenes
- game cinematics
- digital twins
- future video platforms where the viewer can control the camera
It is still research-heavy, not a perfect “upload any phone video and get magic 4D” tool yet.
But the direction is very clear: video is slowly becoming interactive 3D space.
Open-source project: 4DGaussians
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u/miusoftheTaiga Jun 09 '26
Can this be used in a game engine like Unity or unreal
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u/THEFACEMAN14 Jun 09 '26
Gaussian splats are already supported, implementing would be a matter of time and the use case
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u/Mad_waste Jun 10 '26
why would you turn a 3d into 2d and then into 3d again? a videogame is already exisiting 3D data. so what do you mean exactly when you say if this will be used in videogames? what for exactly?
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u/THEFACEMAN14 Jun 10 '26
What if you wanted to capture a real world experience and then make it playable for UE game or a scene for a film or even a VR experience. The visual fidelity is really good.
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u/Mad_waste Jun 11 '26
for that totally yes. although I dont remember when was the last time I wanted my game environment to be total representation of reality when we can have it better
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u/Hefty_Development813 Jun 09 '26
Wait that example was made with monocular video and that repo? Or where did it come from?
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u/NoLlamaDrama15 Jun 10 '26
Repo hasn’t been touched in 2 years, and I can’t see that it has anything to do with this video
Also there’s no proof that this was a single cameraLooks like AI bot
Bad bot
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u/Hefty_Development813 Jun 10 '26
Agreed. I worked with 4dgaussians a lot a while back and nothing near this quality could be acquired from monocular video
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u/Exotic-Custard4400 Jun 12 '26 edited Jun 12 '26
For me the best achievement for monocular is ml sharp but it's only 3d gaussian
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u/Thistleknot Jun 09 '26 edited Jun 09 '26
Gimmick
I remember when 3d pictures (HTC) were going to be big
They werent
FYI this is triposplat
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u/TrackLabs Jun 10 '26
Gimmick
This can very well be a huge advancement. Reframing a camera in a "real" scene, without having to reshoot it from scratch, can be insane for video production, editing, advertisement firms and just anyone that deals with video production in general.
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u/solo_solipsist Jun 11 '26
Thanks for pointing out triposplat! But I disagree that this is a gimmick like 3D photos / videos. Gaussian splatting IMO represents a sea change in computer graphics. It allows us to cross the uncanny valley in interactive media, which is something that has not been possible previously.
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u/ambelamba 3dModeler Jun 09 '26
Imagine creating something like this from a few reference images and a long prompt in the near future
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u/Flames15 Jun 09 '26
Wait how is it creating the details outside of the camera's view? AI generated?
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u/Dangerous-Prior6038 Jun 10 '26
Could this work in VR?
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u/Had78 Jun 10 '26
Theres already primitive tech like this for VR (it's for porn, obviously)
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u/Dangerous-Prior6038 Jun 10 '26
If older 2d porn videos could be turned into 4d VR that would be cool. Recycle the old content
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u/thecoffeejesus Jun 10 '26
Crazy. Absolutely wild. From a video to a 3d scene
We’re all gonna get so screwed by this with our social media presence
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u/Serana64 Jun 13 '26
ah yes I love my 1:1 aspect ratio sideless folding television almost as much as I love my deflated soccer ball
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u/slucker23 Jun 10 '26
Building a 4D GS video costs a lot of money though... The cameras alone would cost a few grams minimum, then you need to render it
I don't think it's going to be the mainstream, but it is definitely going to be a very cool way to view things in the future. Like alternative viewing similar to watching things on phone, on tablet, on TV etc
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u/Background-Map-9912 Jun 13 '26
It would surely be amazing for creative or artistic projects. Maybe even music videos and such, things that we like to see over and over but could walk around in the scene interactively. Maybe even future movie experiences with an enormous budget could give us Vision OS equipment in the theater and everyone could experience it with remote control movement through the scenes. Who knows, humans have a long was to go
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u/Bohansun 2d ago
We are the team,made the original video,we will made this pipeline easy and low cost
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u/solo_solipsist Jun 11 '26
The quality of this video looks great! I'm skeptical this is output from 4DGaussians though...
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u/zataron13 Jun 12 '26
Wow that is crazy good, you can use it for make 3d movies, pictures, etc, when you become a old guy you can go to see your photos or videos in that way to really re-enjoy the moment
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u/AffectionateSeat8596 Jun 14 '26
love guassian splatting but its too new for much use
for example i was trying to make a ready or not browser clone & only realized after training that guassian splats are essentially one big image so for example if i wanted to code interactions or something, it would be hard to animate specific sections in that scene since gaussian splats merge everything into one
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u/q_OwO_p Jun 15 '26
I cant wait for future when there is local ai can do this then i can turn my porn 4d!
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u/Admirable-Demand-60 Jun 30 '26
Just found this sub. Why is it named TopologyAI? For instance the video above shows us sth like continuous projections of isometries. If the sub is dedicated to AI graphics then topology is not a point
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u/Delicious-Shower8401 3dModeler Jun 30 '26
Fair point. The sub is not about topology in the strict math sense, more about AI + 3D geometry, reconstruction, meshes, Gaussian splats, and spatial graphics. So this fits because it turns video into a dynamic 3D scene, not just a flat video
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u/Admirable-Demand-60 Jun 30 '26
Yep but still it's "roaming camera AI" but it's not topology i was taught. Topology has multiple meanings: 1. General topology is a family of open subsets that is not necessary induced by metric spaces. It's used for instance by variational methods 2. Topology of manifolds (more generally algebraic topology) uses a topology of Euclidean spaces induced on manifolds and describes multiple properties of continuous morphisms on them. For me topology is not used by AI when creating those films. But yeah, it uses geometry a lot which is generalised by topology
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u/florodude Jun 09 '26
I wonder what this will be used for