How XGRIDS transforms professional film production with 3D Gaussian Splatting

XGRIDS combines 3D Gaussian Splatting (3DGS) hardware and software to create production-ready digital twins for film production. By enabling a single captured environment to be reused across location scouting, pre-production, virtual production, VFX, and post-production, XGRIDS helps teams improve spatial accuracy, reduce asset recreation, and streamline workflows through seamless integration with industry-standard creative tools.

Expert insights

"XGRIDS is changing how production teams work with real-world environments. Capturing a location once and having a ready-to-use digital twin that flows seamlessly across scouting, virtual production, and VFX pipelines removes significant duplication from traditional workflows — and that has a genuine impact on both budget and creative flexibility."

— Richard Dunlop, heliguy™ Geospatial Lead

Key takeaways

• XGRIDS combines 3DGS capture hardware and software to create production-ready digital twins of real-world environments.

• A single captured environment can be reused across location scouting, pre-production, virtual production, and post-production workflows.

• True-to-scale digital twins improve planning accuracy and reduce production risk before filming begins.

• Relightable 3DGS environments enable greater creative flexibility for virtual production and VFX teams.

• Support for industry-standard formats allows XGRIDS assets to integrate with leading production, broadcast, and post-production platforms.

• By reducing the need for repeated modelling and asset recreation, 3DGS can help improve production efficiency and lower workflow complexity.

As virtual production, VFX, and digital content creation continue to evolve, filmmakers are under increasing pressure to create high-quality visual experiences while managing tight budgets and production schedules. Technologies that can streamline workflows and reduce the need for repeated asset creation are becoming increasingly important across the film industry.

This article explores how XGRIDS combines 3D Gaussian Splatting (3DGS) hardware and software to create production-ready digital environments that can be used throughout the filmmaking process. From location scouting and pre-production to virtual production and post-production, you'll learn how 3DGS is helping teams capture, refine, and reuse real-world environments more efficiently.

Film industry challenges: why traditional workflows are under pressure

For decades, film production has relied on technologies such as photography, videography, photogrammetry, LiDAR scanning, and traditional 3D modelling to bridge the gap between physical locations and digital production.

While these tools have enabled increasingly sophisticated visual effects and virtual production workflows, they often require significant time, specialised expertise, and repeated asset reconstruction throughout the production process.

As productions become more complex, four key challenges continue to impact efficiency:

• Spatial accuracy: Incomplete or simplified representations of real-world locations can lead to discrepancies between digital planning and physical production.

• Repeated asset recreation: Environments, lighting setups, and digital assets often need to be rebuilt or reworked across different stages of production.

• Time and budget pressure: Traditional workflows require significant modelling, asset preparation, and manual labour, increasing production costs and timelines.

• Disconnected workflows: Assets frequently move between multiple software ecosystems, creating inefficiencies and collaboration challenges across departments.

These challenges highlight the need for a more efficient way to capture, represent, and reuse real-world environments throughout the entire production pipeline.

The XGRIDS solution: one asset, every stage

XGRIDS addresses these challenges through an end-to-end 3DGS ecosystem of 3D scanning hardware and software designed to transform real-world environments into production-ready digital assets.

Unlike traditional reconstruction methods that often require extensive modelling and optimisation, 3DGS enables the rapid creation of highly detailed, photorealistic digital environments while preserving real-world spatial information.

XGRIDS scanners: production-ready 3DGS capture

The XGRIDS scanner lineup is designed to rapidly capture real-world environments and transform them into production-ready 3DGS content.

Different scanners can support different stages of the filmmaking pipeline.

While PortalCam remains capable of supporting the full production pipeline, including mesh generation through LCC Studio, Lixel K2 offers an attractive balance between visual quality and downstream production flexibility, making it a strong choice for productions that require both high-quality digital twins and advanced post-production workflows.

XGRIDS software: visualise, refine, integrate

Once captured, XGRIDS software suites, such as LixelCyberColor, enables teams to visualise, refine, optimise, and deploy 3DGS content across production workflows.

Key capabilities include:

• High-quality 3DGS reconstruction and scene generation.

• Scene segmentation and asset extraction.

• Relighting and advanced lighting workflows.

• Asset multiplication from a single capture.

• Seamless integration with industry-standard tools through .ply and .lcc format

• Lightweight datasets that maintain high visual fidelity

The table below outlines the compatibility of XGRIDS assets with leading production platforms.

Powering the entire production pipeline

Together, the XGRIDS hardware and software ecosystem creates a persistent digital twin that can move seamlessly through the entire production pipeline, from location scouting and pre-production to virtual production and post-production.

The following sections explore how XGRIDS creates value at every stage of filmmaking.

Location scouting

Location scouting is the first stage of the production pipeline, identifying and assessing suitable sites to ensure creative, technical, and logistical requirements are met before filming begins.

However, traditional scouting methods often produces fragmented records of physical spaces.

• Photos preserve framing but not navigability

• Videos preserve motion but not precise spatial review

• Notes preserve observations but not shared spatial understanding

Even when a location package is comprehensive, it is still an indirect representation of a place that each department must mentally reconstruct for itself, creating inconsistencies before production even begins.

How XGRIDS helps

3DGS changes this workflow by turning a site visit into a persistent digital reference. With XGRIDS, a location can be captured once, processed into a navigable 3D scene, and revisited repeatedly by teams that were not physically present during the original scout.

XGRIDS delivers production-ready 3DGS content for location scouting:

• Rapid capture of a 200 m² environment in approximately 15 minutes, with model generation completed within five hours.

• Support for single scene capture, map fusion, and aerial-ground map fusion to handle complex environments.

• A navigable 1:1 digital asset that can be carried through every stage of film production.

Iceland Dragon: from location scout to VFX-ready digital twin

Senior VFX artist Alex Henneman of Compositing Academy (credits include Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker, Avengers: Endgame, and Avatar: The Way of Water) combined XGRIDS Lixel K2 with Lightcraft's real-time compositing workflow to transform a real-world location into a production-ready digital asset.

Instead of relying on traditional photos, videos, and notes, the location was captured as a digital twin that could be reused throughout the production process. Alongside the photorealistic 3DGS environment, XGRIDS also generated a real-world-scale mesh through its SLAM-based workflow.

The mesh provided accurate physical structure for:

• Precise measurements and scale reference.

• Accurate shadow casting.

• Proper occlusion between real and digital elements.

• Reliable collision detection and scene interaction.

The project demonstrates how location scouting can evolve from fragmented 2D references to reusable 3D digital twins, creating new possibilities for agile virtual production beyond traditional green screen and LED volume workflows.

Virtual set design and pre-visualisation

Pre-production is the planning and design phase of the production pipeline, where creative concepts, technical requirements, and operational workflows are developed and validated before filming begins.

Through virtual set design and pre-visualization, teams can build and test digital environments, camera movements, and shot sequences in advance, reducing risk, improving collaboration, and ensuring efficient execution during production.

Traditional workflows often present several challenges:

• Spatial accuracy – Designs built without real-world references can lead to mis-scaled sets and costly rebuilds.

• Lighting and realism – Simulating realistic lighting requires extensive modelling, time, and specialist expertise.

• Budget pressure – Constructing physical sets and creating detailed digital models from scratch can cost millions on large-scale productions.

• Cross-department integration – Moving traditional 3D assets between separate software ecosystems can result in version drift and lost detail.

How XGRIDS helps

True-to-scale digital twins for accurate planning

XGRIDS creates measurable, true-to-scale digital twins that allow teams to design within the exact spatial reality of a location. Art directors and pre-vis teams can validate set layouts, camera paths, and production plans with greater confidence before arriving on set.

Photorealistic environments with dynamic relighting

Recent advances in relightable 3DGS technology enable virtual lights, shadows, reflections, and digital objects to interact naturally within captured scenes, making lighting exploration more practical during pre-production.

Asset multiplication from a single capture

A single scan can become the foundation for multiple virtual environments. Captured locations can be relit, modified, and digitally dressed to create different virtual sets, without needing to build every environment from scratch.

Integration into existing production pipelines

XGRIDS is designed to work within existing production workflows rather than replace them. Through standard .ply formats and the highly optimised .lcc format, production-ready 3DGS assets can move seamlessly across departments and software ecosystems.

Virtual production

Virtual production is the execution phase where digital environments and physical production converge in real time.

Using technologies such as LED volumes, camera tracking, and real-time rendering, it enables filmmakers to visualise and capture final-quality scenes on set, improving creative collaboration, reducing production risk, and streamlining downstream workflows.

Several challenges remain within traditional virtual production workflows:

• Spatial constraints in LED volumes: Digital environments that are not designed with stage dimensions and camera limitations in mind can lead to framing issues, visible LED wall edges, and costly "shoot-offs" during production.

• Baked-in lighting: Traditional scanned environments often contain lighting information captured at a specific moment in time, making relighting and compositing difficult when production requirements change.

How XGRIDS helps

Spatial scouting

With XGRIDS, locations are captured as 1:1 digital environments, enabling true-to-scale validation between physical sets and digital assets.

By mapping the environment against the exact dimensions of an LED volume, productions can pre-calculate camera frustums, validate distances between physical props and digital backgrounds, and ensure shots fit the stage before even booking the stage.

Relighting and compositing with Beeble AI

Through its collaboration with Beeble AI, XGRIDS enables captured environments to become relightable assets rather than static scans.

Virtual lights, shadows, reflections, and digital objects can interact naturally within the captured scene, allowing teams to modify lighting conditions independently of the original capture environment.

This significantly simplifies compositing workflows and improves the integration of live-action footage with digital content.

Fox Nation: 12 historical sites in one studio

A Fox Nation documentary required filming across 12 different historical locations. Rather than travelling to each site, all 12 locations were captured with XGRIDS and converted into virtual production assets.

The production was filmed entirely within a single studio in Los Angeles, significantly reducing travel, logistics, and location costs. Because Gaussian Splats are editable, digital artists were able to quickly remove modern landmarks and visual elements, transforming contemporary scans into authentic historical environments.

Adjustable digital lighting also eliminated the need to shoot at specific times of day, providing greater creative flexibility while simplifying production scheduling.

Post-production and VFX

Post-production is where raw footage is transformed into the final cinematic experience. Through compositing, CG integration, visual effects, and colour grading, filmmakers bring together every creative and technical element captured during production.

Traditional workflow can introduce significant time, cost, and complexity:

• Time-consuming environment creation: Large-scale environments often require weeks of manual modelling and asset preparation before creative work can begin.

• Heavy mesh workflows: Creating detailed meshes for entire scenes can be resource-intensive and inefficient, especially for large environments.

• Pipeline fragmentation: Assets frequently move between multiple software platforms, creating additional complexity and workflow overhead.

How XGRIDS helps

Accelerating mesh workflows

XGRIDS enables teams to use production-ready 3DGS environments as a photorealistic foundation for VFX workflows. Instead of rebuilding entire environments from scratch, artists can use splats for backgrounds and large environmental elements while generating high-resolution mesh only where interaction is required.

This hybrid approach reduces modelling workloads while maintaining visual quality, allowing artists to focus resources on areas that matter most.

Native integration across VFX pipelines

XGRIDS integrates directly into existing VFX and post-production workflows through support for industry-standard tools and formats.

Production-ready assets can be used across Unreal Engine, Unity, Nuke, After Effects, Blender, Houdini, DaVinci Resolve, OctaneRender, and other creative applications, enabling teams to move assets efficiently between production stages without rebuilding environments.

Christoph Schindelar: from captured forest to cinematic environment

CG and VFX artist Christoph Schindelar’s forest scene demonstrates how 3DGS can accelerate environment creation for virtual production and VFX.

In a traditional pipeline, a complex forest environment would require artists to manually rebuild almost everything: trees, dense foliage, scattered leaves, textures, and background details. Achieving a photorealistic result can take significant modelling time and production resources.

With XGRIDS, the workflow changes from rebuilding everything to scanning, refining, and enhancing only where needed. Using PortalCam, Christoph captured the real forest scene as a 3DGS environment, then integrated the realistic asset into OctaneRender for cinematic rendering.

With relightable 3DGS technology, the captured environment can support:

• Photorealistic reflections, shadows, and lighting.

• Dynamic CG elements added into the scene.

• Enhanced realism through volumetric fog.

• Ultra-realistic shots built from composited real-world environments.

The result is a photorealistic environment created with dramatically reduced modelling time, allowing artists to focus on creative enhancement rather than rebuilding the entire world from scratch.

Build your XGRIDS 3DGS solution with heliguy™

As an official XGRIDS partner, heliguy™ provides end-to-end support for organisations looking to adopt XGRIDS and 3D Gaussian Splatting workflows. From hardware selection and data capture strategies to software deployment, training, and technical support, we help teams integrate 3DGS technology into existing production pipelines with confidence.

Whether you are exploring virtual production, digital twins, VFX, broadcast, or immersive content creation, our specialists can help you design a solution tailored to your operational requirements, ensuring high-quality results from capture through to final delivery.

Our services include:

• Authorised XGRIDS hardware supply and software access

• Workflow consultation tailored to your requirements

• Training and onboarding

• Ongoing technical support from our in-house survey team

Ready to explore 3DGS for your next project? Discover the XGRIDS product lineup or contact our team to discuss your requirements, arrange a demonstration, and find the right solution for your workflow.

Conclusion

As production workflows become increasingly digital, technologies that enable accurate, reusable representations of real-world environments are likely to play a growing role across the industry. By connecting location capture with virtual production, VFX, and post-production workflows, 3D Gaussian Splatting offers a practical foundation for more integrated and efficient filmmaking.