New Media Manitoba’s StudioLab xR: 3D Gaussian Splatting Acquisition

A hands-on workshop: Turn real-world locations into photorealistic 3D scenes

No advanced 3D or coding background needed. If you’re curious about scanning and reality capture and comfortable finding your way around a computer, you’re ready for this.

Terrestrial scanning has traditionally meant a choice: LiDAR and photogrammetry give you accurate measurements, but the results often look flat, gappy, or artificial once you try to actually look around inside them. 3D Gaussian Splatting (3DGS) changes that equation. It’s a newer capture-and-rendering technique that turns real-world scans into scenes you can walk through in photorealistic detail, reflections, foliage, glass, fine texture and all , and it does it in minutes, not days.

This workshop is a hands-on introduction to that pipeline. In this three day workshop you will learn how to capture a location with modern scanning hardware, how to clean up and process that data, and how to bring the result into a real-time 3D environment where it can actually be used for visualization, presentation, or production.

Join the Virtual Production Academy and Epic Games Authorized Instructors who will walk you through the process end to end. You’ll capture and process a real scan yourself, and see how it’s deployed in a real-time engine including a look at how the same pipeline extends all the way to a live LED wall, one of several places this technology is landing right now.

Terrestrial scanning and 3DGS are useful well beyond any one industry this workshop is built for anyone who wants that skill set, including:

• Reality capture & survey professionals already working with LiDAR or photogrammetry who want to add high-fidelity 3DGS to their toolkit.
• Architecture, engineering & construction (AEC) professionals looking for faster, more photorealistic ways to document and present sites and buildings.
• Real estate, tourism & marketing professionals who want immersive, walk-through-quality captures of properties or destinations.
• Heritage & cultural documentation specialists interested in creating lasting, richly detailed digital records of historic sites.
• Urban planners & digital twin creators building accurate, real-world-based 3D models for planning and public engagement.
• Digital artists & Unreal Engine technicians who want to build real-time environments from real-world scans instead of building everything from scratch.
• Film & advertising professionals curious about digital scouting and how scanned locations can be used in virtual production.
  

What you’ll walk away with knowing how to do:

• Capture a real location as a precise, photorealistic 3D scan using professional-grade scanning hardware.
• Clean up and refine that scan so it’s genuinely usable: sharp, stable, and free of visual noise.
• Bring the scan into a real-time 3D engine (Unreal Engine) and get it running smoothly.
• Understand how a finished scan gets calibrated and deployed for real-world use, using a live LED wall demonstration as a hands-on example of a real-time deployment pipeline.
• Recognize and troubleshoot the common visual issues that show up when a scan gets pushed into real-time playback.
  

What to bring:

• Curiosity about 3D scanning, no advanced 3D or coding background required.
• Basic comfort navigating a computer; some familiarity with Unreal Engine’s interface is helpful but not mandatory.
  

Your instructors:

This workshop is led by Epic Games Authorized Instructors with real-world reality capture and virtual production experience: Gastón Alvarez and Carlos Vilchis, brought in through a partnership with the Virtual Production Academy.

Between them, they bring hands-on expertise in real-time 3D pipelines, 3D art, capture and digitization of real-world locations, and on-set deployment.