14·3D & Spatial·Passion project
Splatlas
A navigable solar system where every world is a real 3D Gaussian splat, trained on a single GPU from open planetary data rather than painted onto a sphere. Earth, Mars and Mercury come from NASA and USGS mosaics, Earth and Mars with real elevation models on top; the gas giants, which have no surface to model, use open CC-BY colour maps. Fly through, warp to any planet, read it up close.
ResultLive at splatlas.space.
01Discover
Why it exists.
Most solar-system visualisations online use the same trick: a photo or procedural texture wrapped around a UV sphere. It looks fine from a distance and falls apart up close, since there's no real geometry or lighting behind the image.
Splatlas starts from the actual data instead: open NASA and USGS imagery for the Sun through Neptune, with real elevation models on top for Earth and Mars, turned into per-body point clouds and trained into real 3D Gaussian splats on a GPU. The surface is reconstructed, not painted on - it holds together up close and from any angle.
Built solo end to end: the pipeline that turns public satellite imagery and DEMs into trainable splats, the splat training, and the Three.js flythrough app that runs it live at splatlas.space.
02Define
The brief.
Build a solar system where every world is a real 3D Gaussian splat trained from open satellite data, not a texture mapped onto a sphere, and make it run smoothly in a browser.
03Develop
What it took
Skills behind it.
Primary discipline plus the support stack.
Skills demonstrated
- 3D & SpatialPrimary
DEM-displaced and emission-baked splats, trained per body on one GPU.
- Frontend EngineeringSecondary
Three.js flythrough: warp-to-planet navigation, a true-scale toggle, orbital motion, and a date scrubber, all real-time in the browser.
- Data PipelinesSecondary
Renders 150-300 known-pose Blender views per body and trains the splat straight from them - no structure-from-motion.
- ResearchSupporting
Emission-baked, per-body-lit splats - 3DGS pushed past its capture-based use case.
Develop · Notes
The build, in full.
How it came together, the decisions on the record, and the design system - kept off this page so the case study stays a read, not a scroll.
Read the full build notes04Deliver
What shipped.
Live at splatlas.space. The Sun to Neptune as navigable splats with real orbits, a date scrubber, and live space-weather, all running in the browser.
By the numbers
Worlds, Sun to Neptune
GPU, every splat trained
Frames
Selected from the work.
2 frames
01The full system, real orbits and a live date scrubber 02Earth up close: the trained splat next to a real DSCOVR EPIC photo
See also
3D & Spatial
Barnes Vantage
An international portal for viewing real Dubai residences in 3D: walk a real scan yourself, or have a broker drive the same walkthrough live.
3D & Spatial
3DGS Research Pipeline
A reproducible harness with 26 Gaussian-splat engines wired into it, scoring which reconstruction survives a real luxury interior.