TreeSplat: Mergeable Tree for Deformable Gaussian Splatting

Dynamic 3D scene reconstruction from multi-view videos demands representation to model complex deformations at scale. Current Gaussian Splatting based methods often either suffer from significant computation cost due to dense MLP-based modeling or explicit modeling deformation of each Gaussian independently. However, the dynamics of objects within a scene are typically hierarchical and exhibit structural correlations. To leverage these structural priors into the representation, we introduce TreeSplat, a Tree data structure for deformable Gaussian Splatting. In TreeSplat, as the name suggests, motions of Gaussian are represented hierarchically within a tree. Each node learns coefficients for time-varying basis functions, defining a part of the motion. The full motion for any given Gaussian is then determined by accumulating these transformations along the tree path from its leaf node to the root node. This tree isn't predefined; instead, it is constructed adaptively alongside Gaussian densification, where cloning or splitting a Gaussian correspondingly creates new leaf nodes. One central property of TreeSplat is its mergeability; after optimization during training, the hierarchical motion parameters for each Gaussian can be efficiently consolidated. By performing this merging step before test time, we eliminate the need to traverse the tree explicitly for each Gaussian during rendering. This results in dramatically faster rendering over 200 FPS and compact storage, while maintaining state-of-the-art rendering quality. Experiments on diverse synthetic and real-world datasets validate these advantages.