For those who don’t know the provider: The Pixel Lab sells ready-made 3D, VFX and motion-design assets. Its new Gaussian-splat packs arrive as .ply files for splat-capable workflows.
Precious stones, suspiciously affordable
The Pixel Lab has released two new Gaussian-splat asset packs: 30 gemstones for $39 and more than 40 ancient tree stumps for $45. This is possibly the first time in modern CG production that a box full of gemstones looks cheap.
The gemstone pack includes vanadinite, emerald, ruby, quartz, fluorite, azurite, amethyst, malachite and various other minerals (And we are just quoting their list – I have no idea about rocks AT ALL) with the sort of fractured, crystalline detail that can turn a simple modelling task into an evening of poor decisions. Instead, Pixel Lab supplies the captures as .ply files.
The complete pack occupies 7 GB. So yes: thirty gemstones cost $39, while the RAM, SSD space and GPU required to enjoy them still represents the more serious financial commitment. The jewellery is no longer the expensive part of the shot.
Stumps without the sculpting session
The second pack contains more than 40 captured tree stumps, including mossy, decayed and mushroom-covered variations plus different species and pieces of driftwood. That is 11 GB of dead trees for $45.
Anyone who has spent half a day sculpting bark for an object eventually positioned three metres behind the hero character may appreciate the economics here. The pack is aimed squarely at environment dressing: drop in irregular organic detail without modelling every cavity, broken edge and patch of moss from scratch. Pixel Lab says the stump splats include textures and can be relit for different moods. As always with captured material, the useful question is not whether the demo looks nice but whether the asset survives the actual shot.
Splats are assets now
The more interesting part of these releases is not the individual stones or stumps. It is that Gaussian splatting is starting to look less like a technology demo and more like an ordinary asset format. The artist does not have to capture the object, train or process the splat and build the workflow from scratch. The Pixel Lab has already packaged the result as something you can buy, download and put into a production. That is a familiar asset-library model applied to a newer representation.
For gemstones, that means highly irregular crystalline forms without building every fracture as geometry. For stumps, it means dense natural detail without producing another heroic 20-million-polygon lump of bark because somebody said “foreground-ish” in the briefing.
Storage remains undefeated
The gemstone pack needs 7 GB of disk space and the stump pack 11 GB. Neither figure is remarkable for a modern workstation, but they are a useful reminder that Gaussian splats do not abolish data. They simply choose a different place to put it. The stones are cheap. Storage arrays remain storage arrays, and we all know how hellishly expensive those are these days.
A small studio buying both packs will spend $84 on the assets. Anyone running a substantial 3D department already knows that $84 is not generally the number in the budget spreadsheet that causes the meeting.
Licensing is less funny
Pixel Lab’s standard Individual License covers one artist or seat and allows commercial use across multiple projects. The assets may not be redistributed or shared among multiple artists under a single individual licence. The company also offers studio licensing for larger teams, with Small Studio, Big Studio and Enterprise tiers. So putting the files on shared storage is technically easy. Making them available to the whole floor is still a licensing question. Even Gaussian splats cannot escape administration.
Friday verdict, minus the verdict
These packs are straightforward: captured detail, delivered as PLY, sold at asset-library prices. The gemstone collection is the more amusing proposition because the raw material sounds luxurious while the actual product costs less than many fairly mundane production accessories. Thirty gemstones for $39 is the sort of pricing that makes real jewellery feel badly optimised.
The tree stumps are perhaps even more practical. Forest dressing devours time, and nobody wins an award because the seventh stump from camera had beautifully hand-authored topology. The sensible use case for both packs is equally simple: bring them into the intended host, put them under the intended lighting, move the camera where the shot actually needs it and see whether they hold up.
https://www.thepixellab.net/3d-gaussian-splat-pack-gemstones
https://www.thepixellab.net/3d-gaussian-splat-pack-ancient-tree-stumps
https://github.com/Kiri-Innovation/Gaussian-Splatting-plugin-by-KIRI-Engine
| Products | 3D Gaussian Splat Pack: Gemstones; 3D Gaussian Splat Pack: Ancient Tree Stumps |
| Developer | The Pixel Lab |
| Assets | 30 gemstones; 40+ ancient tree stumps |
| Format | .ply |
| Storage | Gemstones: 7 GB; Ancient Tree Stumps: 11 GB |
| After Effects workflow | Existing Gaussian-splat .PLY imported and rendered via a plug-in such as KIRI Engine Gaussian Splatting; AE 3D cameras can animate the view |
| Individual licence | One artist/seat; commercial multi-project use permitted; redistribution and multi-seat sharing prohibited |
| Pricing | Gemstones: $39; Ancient Tree Stumps: $45 |
