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Splat Rendering Architecture

PlayCanvas supports two rendering modes for Gaussian splats: Unified and Non-unified. Understanding these modes helps you choose the right approach for your application.

Unified vs Non-unified Rendering​

Non-unified Mode​

In non-unified mode, each GSplat component is rendered independently:

  • Splats within each component are sorted separately
  • Components are rendered based on their bounding box order
  • Simple setup with no additional overhead
  • Limitation: Visual artifacts occur when splat components overlap

This mode is suitable for simple scenes with a single splat or non-overlapping splats.

Unified Mode​

In unified mode, all GSplat components share a common rendering pipeline:

  • All splats from all components are copied to a shared work buffer
  • Splats are sorted globally across all components
  • Eliminates artifacts when splats overlap
  • Enables advanced features like procedural splats, LOD streaming, and GPU processing

Unified mode is recommended for most applications, especially when:

  • Multiple splat components may overlap
  • You need consistent depth sorting across components
  • You want to use advanced features

Enabling Unified Mode​

Set the unified property to true on your GSplat components:

entity.gsplat.unified = true;

Learn More​

For detailed information about unified rendering architecture and its features, see: