Training settings

The Training panel (closed by default) sets how the splat is trained. Create Splat, Train and Train Again use these settings. Create Splat takes SH Degree, Opaque Splats, Focus Detail and Preview Every when you click it, so changing them while the views render applies to the next run. Settings marked Advanced show with Advanced Settings on (Setup panel), and also with it off once they are set differently from their default.

Settings

Setting	Default	What it does
Steps	Unticked: the quality’s	Training steps. Unticked, the field shows the quality’s: 7,000 for Draft, 30,000 for Standard and High. More steps refine detail and take longer.
Max Splats (k)	Unticked: the quality’s	The splat budget in thousands: 1500 means 1.5 million splats. Unticked, the field shows the quality’s: 300, 1,000 or 2,500.
SH Degree Advanced	Auto	How much a splat’s colour may change with the viewing direction. See below.
Opaque Splats Advanced	Auto	Whether training pushes every splat to fully opaque or gone. See below.
Focus Detail Advanced	3	How much harder training works around focus points. Available when the scene has focus points.
Preview Every Advanced	15 s	How often the splat so far is shown in the viewport while it trains. 0 shows it only at the end.

Steps and Max Splats (k) are heading checkboxes: ticking one or editing its number makes it yours, unticking returns to the quality’s. See Override any number.

The panel ends with a line on what training does for this capture:

Capture	For example
An object	“Objects: SH degree 3”
An environment	“Environments: SH degree 3 · opaque splats · 4,667 more steps on geometry views”

The SH degree is named only while SH Degree is Auto, opaque splats only while Opaque Splats is Auto, and the extra steps only with geometry views. With nothing to name (an object with an SH degree of your own), there is no line. Environments train opaque splats: training pushes every splat to fully opaque or to nothing. See Opaque Splats.

Steps and the splat budget

Training starts from points on the rendered surfaces and grows the splat up to its budget, refining it with every step. A larger budget can hold finer detail but needs more GPU memory and time; the estimate in the Create Splat panel shows both.

In an environment with geometry views (the default), training also spends steps on them, on top of the steps you set: they make up 40% of the total. A Draft splat of a room therefore trains 11,667 steps (7,000 + 4,667), as the estimate’s Splats row and the Results panel show.

SH Degree

A splat’s colour can change with the viewing direction, described by spherical harmonics (SH). The degree sets how much:

SH Degree	Colour per splat
Auto (default)	3: objects and environments are seen from all around
0	One colour, the same from every direction (the smallest file)
1	Gentle changes with the direction
2	Stronger changes
3	The most: sheen and soft reflections

Higher degrees need every surface seen from many directions. With views from only a few places, they make up colour for directions no view saw, which shows as flares when you look from new angles. An environment’s views are placed by its surfaces, which they see from all around, so Auto uses 3 there as for objects: on a harbour model degree 3 did 1 dB better from around it and 1.4 dB from down at the water.

Raise it when a room’s views see its shiny parts from many sides. Lower it when new angles show colours that do not belong.

Opaque Splats

Opaque Splats	Splats
Auto (default)	Opaque for environments, free for objects
On	Every splat fully opaque or gone
Off	Splats keep the opacity training gives them

Opaque splats render solid in EEVEE: in our test room they scored 1.5 dB higher there. On objects they cost 0.1 to 0.4 dB, so Auto leaves objects free. See-through materials (glass, fog, smoke) cannot stay see-through as opaque splats: in the Barbershop (fog and glass), free splats scored 0.2 dB higher on views training did not see, at Draft. Off suits an environment full of them. A setting other than the kind’s own makes a training of its own: Train turns red after the change.

Focus Detail

With focus points in the scene, the pixels that show a focus area count this many times, and more of the splats gather there. Focus areas come out sharper and the rest a little softer. In our test room, a focus area came out 1.4 dB sharper at 3 with nothing lost elsewhere. 1 turns it off. It is separate from the Views panel’s Focus Weight, which picks views.

Preview Every

While a new splat trains, a preview object named <name> (training) shows the splat so far in the Splats collection. It is replaced every 15 seconds by default and removed when the finished splat arrives. The refresh button at the end of the training’s progress bar shows the current state at any time. While a splat trains on (Improve), it stays as it is until the new result arrives.

Training further

Action	Where	What it trains
Train	Create Splat panel	A new splat on the views rendered last, with these settings, named after the subject they were rendered for
Improve…	Results	The same splat from its checkpoint, with more views (Automatic views only), more steps, or both; with Keep the Current Splat, into a new splat
Train Again	Results, the splat’s menu	A new splat on that splat’s views with these settings, named after it (Suzanne Splat.001); the old one stays to compare

Checkpoints and failures

The engine saves a checkpoint every 5 minutes, and when you pause. If a training fails, for example after a GPU reset or when memory runs out, the panel says why, with Open Log at the end of the line, and if a checkpoint was saved, Resume goes on from it.

If memory runs out, the message reads “not enough memory (GPU or system)”: lower Max Splats, the view Count or the image size, or close other programs while it trains. A VRAM limit in the preferences makes the estimate warn before you start.

GPU memory

Training keeps the splats and the views’ data on the GPU. When the views would take more than 1 GB there, SplatPilot keeps them in system memory instead and copies each step’s view to the GPU as it goes, at the same speed. Training a room in our tests took at most about 0.7 GB of GPU memory at Draft, under 1 GB at Standard and 2.8 GB at High. The estimate’s VRAM row shows what your settings need, out of your card’s memory once Test GPU has found it (“0.6 of 12 GB”).

Training time

The estimate’s training time comes from your GPU’s speed: Test GPU in the preferences measures it, and every finished training refines it. The first training on a machine also compiles the engine’s shaders, a minute or two at “Preparing the engine…”, unless Test GPU did that already.