3D Gaussian Splatting in Australia: The Complete Guide (2026)
From SIGGRAPH paper to Australian job sites in three years: what 3D Gaussian Splatting actually is, who's using it here, exact hardware pricing in AUD inc GST, onshore Queensland processing, and 12 real scenes you can open in your browser right now.
In August 2023, 3D Gaussian Splatting was a computer graphics paper presented at SIGGRAPH. By 2026, we've used it to document a live Gold Coast Highway corridor without a lane closure, record a council seawall at three stages of construction, and put capture hardware into the hands of police forensic units in two states. That's a fast trip from research lab to Australian job site — three years, give or take. This guide covers what 3DGS actually is in plain terms, why councils, builders and investigators here are adopting it, what the hardware costs in Australian dollars, and where you can open real scenes in your browser right now.
What is 3D Gaussian Splatting, in plain terms?
A 3DGS model is built from millions of small, semi-transparent, coloured 3D shapes — Gaussians — each with a position, size, orientation and colour. Rendered together, they reproduce a real place photorealistically from any angle, in real time, in a standard web browser. No mesh, no textures, no game engine needed to view it. The technique came out of that 2023 SIGGRAPH paper and spread quickly through reality capture because it fixed what made the older methods painful: photogrammetry takes hours or days to process and struggles with reflective, thin or vegetated surfaces, and NeRFs looked impressive in demos but rendered too slowly to be practical on a deadline.
The simplest way to think about it: a photo shows one angle. A video shows one path. A point cloud is measurable but sparse and grey — clients rarely understand what they're looking at. A 3DGS scene is all of it at once: photoreal like video, navigable like a game, and — when captured with LiDAR fusion rather than cameras alone — measurable like a proper deliverable. You can put it in front of an engineer and a councillor in the same meeting and both get what they need.
Why 3DGS matters for Australian industries
For councils, it's a construction record you can walk through. We captured the Mooloolaba seawall for Sunshine Coast Council infrastructure work at three dated stages — 5 April during early works, 13 April after the concrete pour, and 20 May near completion. Each capture is a complete, photoreal snapshot of the site on that day. Not a folder of hundreds of photos someone has to sort — one scene, every angle, timestamped. The same approach documented the Moffat Beach coastal works. When a variation claim or a community question lands two years later, the site as it existed is one click away.
For forensics, the case is even more direct. Queensland Police Forensic Imaging is equipped with this hardware. Victoria Police's Major Crime Scene Unit is onboarded. NSW Police and the AFP are evaluating. A physical scene gets released — sometimes within hours. A 3DGS capture preserves it permanently: walkable and measurable long after the tape comes down.
For construction and engineering, speed is the story. On the Gold Coast Highway we scanned a live corridor in a single ~10-minute pass on foot — one operator, no lane closure — and published point cloud, 3DGS scene and vector extraction in under a day. Read the case study. Paired with AI Scan-to-BIM, one operator can capture 1,000 m² in about 30 minutes and deliver LOD 400 output — we benchmarked one operator against a traditional three-person workflow. Firms like Brian Cummins Group and Realserve work with this class of capture commercially, universities use it for research, and heritage teams use it to document structures that can't be replaced.
The hardware that captures 3DGS in Australia
We're the XGRIDS National Distributor for Australia, so the gear below is what we sell, hire, support and use on our own jobs. Four scanners, four different jobs. All prices are AUD inc GST, and the full XGRIDS price list for Australia sits on one page.
PortalCam is the entry point: an 870 g, four-camera 3DGS array capturing pure Gaussian splat scenes at ±2 cm relative accuracy. Standard is $7,699 inc GST with a one-year LCC Basic licence; Premium is $10,199 inc GST with LCC Premium and a second battery. Be clear about what it isn't: no RTK, no point cloud output. If you need photoreal scenes for visualisation, heritage or documentation — not survey deliverables — this is the honest budget answer.
Lixel K1 is the handheld SLAM LiDAR workhorse at $14,999 inc GST: 1 kg, 200,000 points per second, ±1.2 cm relative accuracy, 0.1–40 m range, and multi-SLAM that keeps tracking where GPS can't reach — indoors, underground, under canopy.
Lixel K2 is what we hand people who need both worlds. Under 1 kg with built-in RTK (UM980) and three cameras for real-time colour, it outputs a point cloud and a 3DGS scene from the same walk — under 1 cm relative, around 3 cm absolute. From $15,999 inc GST, or $16,999 inc GST for the Scan More package. For most Australian survey and construction teams entering 3DGS, this is the one.
Lixel L2 Pro is the enterprise option: 640,000 points per second, range up to 300 m, ±1 cm relative / ±3 cm absolute, and drone-mountable for aerial-ground fusion work. Three configurations: 16-channel/120 m at $42,199, 32-channel/120 m at $61,099, and 32-channel/300 m at $85,499, all inc GST.
The software pipeline: LixelStudio and LCC
Every scanner ships with three permanent LixelStudio licences — that's the point cloud side: registration, cleanup, export. The 3DGS side is LCC CyberColor, which turns capture data into the streamed scenes in our gallery. Its patented compression cuts file sizes by roughly 90% versus open-source 3DGS — the difference between a scene that streams in a browser and one that never finishes loading. It also handles AI object removal, so moving cars and pedestrians disappear from the final scene, and aerial-ground map fusion — we've fused a DJI drone capture with an L2 Pro ground scan into one seamless model.
- →Exports: .lcc, .lcc2, .ply, .sog, .spz, .obj, .usd and 3D Tiles
- →Deploys to: Unity, Unreal, WebGL, Revit, ArcGIS and Apple Vision Pro
- →AI object removal: clean scenes captured on live, occupied sites
- →Aerial-ground fusion: drone and handheld data merged into one model
Data sovereignty: processed onshore, in Queensland
Most 3DGS platforms on the market are overseas cloud services. You upload your site — a police scene, council infrastructure, a commercial asset — to servers in another jurisdiction, and you trust the terms of service. We built the opposite. Every capture we process runs onshore in Queensland, on our own infrastructure. For clients who can't touch the internet at all, we deliver air-gapped: a perpetual LCC licence on a physical dongle, no connection required, ever. For police forensic work and government infrastructure, that's not a feature — it's the entry requirement.
A photoreal model is only useful if you can measure it, trust it, and keep it on Australian soil.
See it live: 12 real scenes in your browser
Reading about a 3D format is a poor way to judge one. Open the gallery — 12 real 3DGS scenes, self-hosted and streamed from our Australian infrastructure, in any browser, no install. Start with the three Mooloolaba Seawall captures and scrub through construction time: 5 April early works, 13 April post-pour, 20 May near completion. Then open Federation Pavilion in Sydney, which we captured twice — once with the K2, once with the PortalCam — so you can judge the same site through two different sensors. The rest run from the Queensland Steel Structure Bridge and the ANZAC Memorial in Hyde Park to the Sydney University Quadrangle and, because this is Australia, the Big Banana at Coffs Harbour.
How to get started with 3DGS in Australia
Three routes, depending on how much of the workflow you want to own.
- →Buy — own the scanner, the three LixelStudio licences and the workflow. From $7,699 (PortalCam) to $85,499 (L2 Pro 32ch/300m), all inc GST.
- →Hire first — PortalCam from $150/day, K1 $200/day, K2 $250/day, L2 Pro 32/120 $450/day, all inc GST. Demo-to-Buy: hire for up to 5 days and 100% of the hire fee credits against a purchase within 90 days.
- →Done-for-you — we capture, process and deliver. One operator on your site, scenes published to a browser link, processed onshore.
Hire is booked at aect.solutions/rent. Capture projects run through our 3DGS modelling service. And if your team wants to build the skill in-house, we run training on the full capture-to-publish workflow.
Frequently asked questions
Is 3DGS survey-grade?
The splats are the visual layer; accuracy comes from the sensor underneath. PortalCam is camera-only at ±2 cm relative, with no RTK and no point cloud output — visualisation, not survey. K2 pairs the 3DGS scene with an RTK point cloud at under 1 cm relative and roughly 3 cm absolute, which puts deliverables inside common construction tolerances. For where each tool fits a formal workflow, see our capability statement.
How long does a capture take?
Less than you'd budget. The Gold Coast Highway corridor was one ~10-minute pass on foot, with the point cloud, 3DGS scene and vector extraction published in under a day. A 1,000 m² floor takes one operator about 30 minutes on the Scan-to-BIM workflow.
What does 3DGS cost in Australia?
Hardware runs $7,699 to $85,499 inc GST depending on sensor and range. Hire starts at $150/day inc GST, and under Demo-to-Buy the hire fee is 100% creditable against a purchase within 90 days. Done-for-you capture is quoted per site — scope, access and deliverables move the number, so we quote rather than guess.
Shortest path from here: open the live gallery, pick the scene closest to your kind of work, and picture your own site in the viewer. Then book a hire unit — remember the fee credits against purchase — or talk to us about capturing your first site.
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