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HOME/USEFUL GUIDES/COMPREHENSIVE GUIDE TO 3D FILE FORMATS/SPZ FILE FORMAT EXPLAINED

SPZ File Format Explained

SPZ is Niantic's compressed file format for 3D Gaussian splats, designed to make splats smaller, easier to share, and faster to load on web and mobile platforms.

	Icon	Extension	Original Software	Year	Primary Industry	Geometry	UV Maps	Textures	PBR	Animation	Rigging	Open Use
		.SPZ	Gaussian Splat	2024	Spatial Computing XR (Extended Reality) Game Development	Point Cloud	–	–	–	–	–	✔
SPZ File Format Details What It Stores The format stores 3D Gaussian splat data, including positions, alphas/opacities, colors, scales, rotations, and spherical harmonics. Primary Use Cases Real-time web-based 3D visualization. Mobile and spatial-computing viewers that support Gaussian splats. Efficient distribution of large 3D Gaussian splat scenes. Strengths Achieves file sizes roughly 10x smaller than uncompressed PLY files. Compresses 3-5x faster and loads 1.5-2x faster end-to-end than older iterations. Significantly reduces bandwidth requirements for spatial computing. Limitations Lossy compression can slightly degrade visual fidelity compared to raw PLY data. Compatibility in traditional DCC applications may require plugins, importers, or conversion tools. Common Software Support Supported by Niantic's open-source SPZ library, Niantic Spatial and Scaniverse workflows, Niantic's web-based SPZ Converter, and PDAL's SPZ reader and writer.

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