Installation

Go to "Edit - Preferences - Addons" and in the top right corner hit "install from file". Navigate to the .zip and install. After installing you will find the settings on the ride side in the "n" panel.

Settings

• "Select Export File Path" -  the directory where all the generated files, like images, camera alignments and point clouds are saved. We suggest using a new folder for every new project.
• "Use Custom Focal Length" - If you don't like the automatically calculated focal length you can set your own one. We suggest to not use a lower value than 18mm.
• "Optimize for InstantNGP" - Select to export a data set optimized for the NeRF InstantNGP framework.
• "Optimize for Postshot" - Select to export a data set optimized for Postshot.
• "Point Cloud Density" -  Depending on your scene size you might want to start with a lower value. For final export we liked a value of +- 4000.
• "Frame Count" - The amount of images generated and rendered. Default setting is 20 seconds per image. so a 200 image date set will render for about an hour. Increase if not all areas are covered.
• "Resolution X & Y" The rendering resolution. We suggest keeping 1000*1000px. Higher values will not drastically improve results with Gaussian Splatting or NeRFs.
• "Minimum Camera Distance" - The minimum distance the camera keeps from objects in meters. Might want to decrease the value in cluttered scenes or increase in wide open scenes. For large scene / indoor camera placement and object centric scenes! 
• "Minimum Camera Rotation Distance" -  The minimum distance before the camera is rotated in meters. This is a safety feature so no useless images are generated where the camera is facing a close object. Only for large scene / indoor camera placement.
• "Minimum Tilt Angle" - When the camera is close to the ground it get's rotated upwards and if it close to the ceiling it get's rotated downwards by the specified value in degrees. Only for large scene / indoor camera placement.
• "Maximum Camera Adjustment Attempts" -  If a location is considered unsafe (to close to objects) the camera will be repositioned. Decrease if placing the cameras takes too long. Only for large scene / indoor camera placement.
• "Maximum Particle Amount converted to Mesh" - The maximum amount of particles being converted to a mesh before being ignored. High values might lead to VERY long point cloud calculation times.
• "Test Percentage" -  Amount of cameras being written into the transforms_test.json. For research purposes. 
• "Draw Bounding Box" -  The bounding box gets calculated automatically. You can adjust the size if necessary. The bounding box should only contain the relevant parts of the scene, such as the character/statue etc. in the object centric case and the room or interesting part of the environment for an open scene. The cameras will be placed relative to the bounding box.
• "Create Camera Hemisphere / Central Object" - Generate Camera Positions for object centric scenes, like a character, a single object etc.
• "Create Camera Large Scene / Indoor" - For large scenes, like archviz, environment art and so on. Play around with the settings "Minimum Camera Distance", "Minimum Camera Rotation Distance" and "Maximum Camera Adjustment Attempts" for better results. Feel free to manually change the camera keyframes or add more if the automatic results are not satisfactory. Just make sure to adjust the animation duration in Blenders render settings if you manually add more keyframes.
• "Create and Export Point Cloud" - Creates and exports the point cloud with the specified settings into the chosen directory. The point cloud will be displayed in the scene after completion. 
• "Prepare Render Settings" -  Copies the settings like resolution and focal length to the blender scene.
• "Export Camera Files" - Exports the camera alignments into the chosen directory as transforms_train.json and transforms_test.json.

To start the rendering process to go "Render" and select "Animation".

License

The "Splatman" addon by Svenja Strobel and Colin Behrens is provided for **private, non-commercial use only**. Users are **not allowed** to modify, distribute, or use this addon for any commercial purposes, regardless of the licensing option displayed by this platform.

By downloading and using this addon, you agree to the following terms:

- The addon is intended for private, non-commercial use only.

- Redistribution, modification, or any commercial use of this addon is strictly prohibited.