SuperSplat Editor Guide: Clean Up Gaussian Splats

What SuperSplat is

SuperSplat is a free, open-source editor for 3D Gaussian splats, made by PlayCanvas. It runs in a web browser at superspl.at/editor. The project's GitHub page describes the SuperSplat editor as a tool for inspecting, editing, optimizing and publishing 3D Gaussian splats, and the code is released under the MIT licence.

It helps to be clear about what it does not do. SuperSplat does not turn photos or video into a splat. PlayCanvas says in its own documentation that it does not provide a tool for that step, and it points readers to third-party trainers instead. You arrive with a finished splat file, and you use SuperSplat to clean it, reposition it and share it.

The name also covers more than the editor. The superspl.at site also hosts a public gallery and a Studio for adding cameras and annotations to published scenes. According to the documentation, the editor and the viewer are MIT-licensed, while Studio, the gallery and the scene pages are services hosted by PlayCanvas. This guide is about the editor, which also has color controls and a camera animation timeline not covered here.

Where it runs and what you need

There is nothing to install. You open the editor page and start working. The documentation lists one firm requirement: a browser with WebGPU support. It names current Chrome or Edge, Safari 26 or later, or Firefox with WebGPU enabled. If WebGPU is not available, the editor shows a message at startup instead of loading.

A few other points from the official manual:

• Splats are loaded locally in your browser. Nothing is uploaded until you choose to publish.
• You do not need an account to edit and export. A free PlayCanvas account is needed only to publish to superspl.at, or to like and comment there.
• Hardware acceleration should stay enabled in the browser, and a dedicated GPU helps with very large splats.
• You can optionally install the editor as an app from the browser's address bar. It can then open splat files directly from Finder or File Explorer.

The GitHub README also explains how to run your own copy with Node.js.

Loading a PLY in the SuperSplat editor

The documentation lists four ways to load a file:

• Drag and drop one or more splat files, or a whole folder, into the window.
• Choose File > Import. File > Import Recent lists files you have opened before.
• Double-click a file in Finder or File Explorer, if you installed the editor as an app.
• Add a load parameter to the address, in the form superspl.at/editor?load= followed by the file's URL.

The editor imports .ply, compressed .ply, .sog, .splat, .ksplat, .spz, and the XGRIDS .lcc and .lcc2 formats. It also reads COLMAP images.txt and INRIA camera pose files, which become camera keyframes on the timeline rather than a scene.

One warning from the manual matters for beginners: only PLY files that contain 3D Gaussian splat data can be loaded. A PLY that holds a plain point cloud or a mesh will fail to import, even though the file extension is the same.

Each file you import appears as a row in the Scene Manager panel. Click a row to make that splat active before you edit, because selection and cleanup apply only to the active splat.

Selection tools

Editing a splat mostly means selecting Gaussians and then doing something with them. The bottom toolbar holds the selection tools, each with a shortcut:

• Rectangle (R): click one Gaussian, or drag a rectangle. This is the default tool.
• Brush (B): paint a selection with a circular brush. The [ and ] keys change its size.
• Polygon (P) and Lasso (L): draw a straight-edged or freehand outline.
• Flood (O): click to grow a selection outward from one point. The manual recommends it for isolated stray Gaussians.
• Eyedropper (Ctrl + E): select Gaussians of a similar color.
• Sphere Brush (Shift + B): paint in 3D so the brush follows the surface under the cursor.
• Sphere and Box: place a 3D volume, adjust it with a gizmo or typed values, then apply it.

Modifier keys work across the 2D tools: no key replaces the selection, Shift adds to it, Ctrl removes from it, and Shift + Ctrl keeps only the overlap. The Sphere and Box tools use Set, Add, Remove and Intersect buttons instead.

Two toggles change what a tool hits. Selection Depth (N) is off by default, so a selection goes through the whole scene; turn it on to pick only the visible surface. Selection Footprint (M) decides whether a Gaussian is picked by its center point or by any part of its projected ellipse. Press Tab to show the Gaussian centers while you work.

Deleting floaters and cropping

Floaters are the stray blobs that hang in the air around a scene. The manual gives a short recipe for them:

• Turn on Selection Depth (N) so selections stop at the visible surface.
• Use Flood for an isolated patch, or Lasso, Brush, Sphere Brush, Sphere or Box for a larger region.
• Rotate the camera and add to or remove from the selection until only the unwanted part is selected.
• Press Delete or Backspace.
• Check the result from several angles, and undo if too much went.

Cropping works the other way round. Select the region you want to keep with Box, Sphere, Lasso or Polygon, leaving Selection Depth off so the selection reaches through the scene. Choose Select > Invert, then delete.

Deleting is non-destructive while you edit. Undo reverses the last deletion, and Select > Reset restores every deleted Gaussian in the active splat. Removing a whole row from the Scene Manager is different: the manual says it cannot be undone.

Pressing H locks the selected Gaussians so they cannot be selected or deleted, which protects a finished area while you clean around it; Shift + H unlocks them. The Splat Data panel lets you select by value ranges, such as low opacity or extreme scale, for cleanup that is hard to do by hand.

Move, rotate, scale, level and measure

The transform tools are Move (1), Rotate (2) and Scale (3). What they affect depends on the selection. With no Gaussians selected, they transform the whole active splat. With some selected, they transform only those. If you meant to move everything, choose Select > None first. You can drag the gizmo in the viewport or type exact Position, Rotation and Scale values in the Transform panel. Transforms can be undone and redone.

Many captures come in tilted or upside down. The Orient tool fixes that: click three points on a surface that should be level, such as a floor or table top, then press Align to Grid.

The Measure tool reports the distance between two points you click on a surface. If you type in the real distance, SuperSplat uniformly rescales the whole active splat to match. The result depends on where you place the two markers.

Saving your work and export formats

Saving and exporting are separate actions. File > Save As writes an .ssproj project, which the manual describes as a ZIP archive holding the splat data as uncompressed PLY together with your edits, transforms, camera and timeline. Use it when you want to continue editing later.

File > Export produces a file for other software. The choices are:

• PLY: the common interchange format. A Compress PLY option writes a much smaller compressed PLY.
• SOG: a super-compressed format that the documentation recommends for runtime use.
• SPZ: Niantic's compressed format.
• Splat: an older compressed format.
• Viewer App: a standalone viewer, either as one HTML file or as a ZIP package.

Exports include the visible splats only. That is also how you merge: make every splat you want visible, export a PLY, and they are combined into one file.

The format table in the manual lists no mesh format such as OBJ or STL, so SuperSplat is not the tool for producing a printable model.

Publishing and sharing

There are two ways to share. The first is File > Publish, which uploads the edited splat to superspl.at and gives it a scene page with its own link. You need to be logged in with a PlayCanvas account. New scenes are published unlisted, so only people with the link can find them until you list the scene from your Manage page. Publishing compresses the splat to SOG, and the manual warns this may take several minutes.

The second way keeps everything in your hands. File > Export > Viewer App creates a viewer you host yourself. The single HTML option embeds the splat in one file that opens with a double-click; the manual notes it is roughly 30% larger than the ZIP package option. The documentation suggests GitHub Pages as one simple place to host it.

A simple workflow: from photos to a shared scene

Because SuperSplat starts from a finished splat, you need something to make one first. SplatLoom is one option. It is a desktop app for Mac (Apple Silicon, macOS 15 or later) and Windows 10/11 that turns overlapping photos or a short video into a Gaussian scene on your own computer, with no upload and no account, and it exports a Gaussian PLY.

A practical split looks like this:

• Make the splat in SplatLoom: pick photos or a video and press Generate.
• Do quick cleanup there if that is all you need: box or sphere crop, rectangle select, one-click spike removal and undo/redo, with the original always kept.
• For finer work, export the PLY and open it in SuperSplat. Brush, lasso and flood selection, locking, transforms, leveling and merging several captures are SuperSplat features that SplatLoom does not have.
• Share from either side: SplatLoom exports an offline HTML viewer, a PNG still and an MP4 orbit video; SuperSplat exports a viewer app or publishes to superspl.at.

Neither tool makes a mesh. If you only want to look at a splat file, the free viewer at splatloom.com/ply-viewer opens Gaussian .ply and .sog files locally in the browser.