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Gaussian Splatting Screenshot — Capture Any 3DGS Scene

Load a Gaussian Splatting file, orbit to the perfect angle, and export a high-resolution PNG screenshot. Runs entirely in your browser.

Last updated Mar 2026

Drop a 3DGS file to capture screenshots

Supports .ply, .splat, .ksplat, .spz (max 200 MB)

What You Should Know

How the Screenshot Tool Works

The screenshot tool loads your Gaussian Splatting file into a WebGL renderer (Spark.js), displays it in an interactive 3D viewport, and lets you capture the current view as a PNG image. When you click "Capture," the tool reads the WebGL canvas pixels using canvas.toBlob(), preserving the full resolution of the rendered frame. The resulting PNG includes the 3DGS scene exactly as you see it in the viewport — with all view-dependent color effects from spherical harmonics rendered correctly.

Resolution and Quality

Screenshots are captured at the native resolution of the viewport canvas. On high-DPI displays (Retina, 4K monitors), the canvas may render at 2x or higher device pixel ratio, producing detailed images. The output PNG uses lossless compression, so there is no quality loss in the exported file. For the best screenshot quality, use a source file with high SH degree (degree 2 or 3) and position the camera where view-dependent effects are most visible.

Supported Input Formats

All Gaussian Splatting formats are supported: PLY (3DGS format with spherical harmonics), SPLAT (32-byte format with base colors), KSplat (PlayCanvas SuperSplat format), and SPZ (Niantic compressed format). The tool automatically detects the format from the file extension and header. PLY and SPZ files with high SH degree will produce the most visually rich screenshots.

Use Cases

Common use cases include: creating preview thumbnails for 3DGS file libraries, generating images for documentation or research papers, capturing specific viewpoints for comparison studies (e.g., before/after optimization), creating marketing materials for 3D scanning services, and producing preview images for 3DGS files that cannot be embedded directly (e.g., in PDF reports or email).

Frequently Asked Questions
Screenshots are exported as PNG files with lossless compression. PNG preserves all color detail without compression artifacts. The file size depends on scene complexity — typically 1-5 MB for a full-viewport capture.
The screenshot captures at the viewport's native resolution, which depends on your browser window size and display DPI. For higher resolution, make the browser window larger before capturing. On Retina/4K displays, screenshots are automatically captured at the higher device pixel ratio.
Yes. If your source file contains spherical harmonics data (SH degree 1-3), the screenshot captures the view-dependent color effects exactly as rendered from the current camera angle. This means the same scene will produce different-looking screenshots from different viewpoints.
The tool supports files up to 200 MB on desktop browsers (approximately 800K-3M Gaussians depending on SH degree and format). Larger files may exceed browser memory limits. For very large scenes, consider compressing to SPZ first or using a desktop viewer for screenshots.
Not currently. The WebGL renderer composites the Gaussian Splatting scene over the viewport background color. Future updates may add transparent background support for use cases like compositing 3DGS renders over other images.
No. All processing happens locally in your browser. Your file is read directly from disk into WebGL memory and never sent to any server. The screenshot is generated from the local canvas and downloaded directly.
Yes. After loading a file, you can orbit, zoom, and pan to any viewpoint and capture as many screenshots as you need. Each capture saves a separate PNG file. There is no batch mode — each screenshot is captured one at a time from the current camera position.

Related Tools

PLY Splat ViewerSPZ Viewer3DGS File InspectorEmbed 3DGSCompress PLY to SPZPLY to SPZ Converter3DGS Format Guide