Physics-Informed 3D Gaussian Splatting for Rainy Scene Simulation
E. Milchi (TU Delft - Electrical Engineering, Mathematics and Computer Science)
M. Weinmann – Mentor (TU Delft - Electrical Engineering, Mathematics and Computer Science)
Saptarshi Neil Sinha – Mentor (Fraunhofer Institute for Computer Graphics Research IGD)
X. Zhang – Graduation committee member (TU Delft - Electrical Engineering, Mathematics and Computer Science)
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Abstract
Simulating the infiltration of rainwater into solid materials is of broad interest across multiple fields, such as agriculture, hydrology, urban planning, and landslide prevention, yet most rainwater infiltration models rely on numerical simulation and offer little support for interactive visualization. Recent advances in 3D scene representation, particularly 3D Gaussian Splatting (3DGS), enable high-quality and photorealistic scene captures that promise an inherent integration with particle-based physics simulation engines. However, existing 3DGS-based weather frameworks emphasize appearance modeling and do not address the interaction between rainwater and materials within a 3D scene.
In this thesis, we present a proof of concept tackling the physics-informed simulation of rainwater infiltration into solids represented by 3D Gaussian Splatting. We build on the FeatureSplatting pipeline and extend it from single-object editing to an interactive visualization of rainwater infiltration into solid media. Our approach comprises three components: (1) a preprocessing pipeline that prunes Gaussian artifacts and applies point cloud infilling strategies to transpose a 3DGS representation into particle space, (2) an extension to the MPM solver that models rainwater infiltration as the transfer of fluid between macroscopic porous particles, and (3) functionality updating 3D Gaussian appearance parameters driven by per-particle saturation. We evaluate the method on synthetic 2D and 3D scenarios and show that it reproduces expected physical behavior, as well as analyze in depth the main factors that govern the rate of fluid spread.