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A field guide to rendering: from triangles to Gaussians

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Nikolaos Papadopoulos

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Description

A field guide to rendering: from triangles to Gaussians is Nikolaos Papadopoulos's July 2026 blog on 4rknova that maps how 3D scenes become pixels. It contrasts object-order scattering (rasterization, splats, point clouds) with image-order gathering (ray tracing, marching, NeRF-style queries).

The essay walks voxels, the ray casting to path tracing family, implicit surfaces, and the shift from neural radiance fields to 3D Gaussian splatting, with interactive demos. The splatting section explains real-time playback via projected Gaussians and sorted alpha blending rather than per-ray network evaluation.

Readers who already understand triangle pipelines but want a single narrative across classical and captured rendering will find the tone conceptual and engine-agnostic. Little math beyond basic projection intuition is required.

The full guide is one free post with in-page sections on Papadopoulos's site. It is often shared as a practical onboarding map to NeRF and splatting vocabulary in graphics programming circles.