Examine 3D Butterfly in High Detail with This Gaussian Splatting Model

3D Gaussian Splatting is a rendering technique that leverages 3D Gaussians to represent the scene, thus allowing one to synthesize 3D scenes out of 2D footage. Simply put, it takes samples of images and turns them into 3D scenes without creating meshes by converting a point cloud to Gaussians using machine learning. You can learn more about it here.

"This was the first butterfly I ever mounted. The process proved quite difficult: you don’t want to touch it more than absolutely necessary. It’s like handling a ball of dust. I wanted a natural pose, one that showed the inner side of the wings, but that was tricky since they were tightly closed and already quite rigid. Using transparent paper instead of tweezers worked better on the wings. Luckily, drying it overnight didn’t change its appearance and made it perfectly stiff. I didn’t even have to fix the antennae. Apart from a few lost scales that got caught in its fur, I’m very pleased with the result. You can even make out most of the individual scales."