Trends and Techniques in 3D Reconstruction and Rendering: A Survey with Emphasis on Gaussian Splatting

Three-Dimensional Gaussian Splatting (3DGS), an important advancement in the field of computer graphics and 3D vision, has emerged to greatly accelerate the rendering process in novel views' synthesis. Due to its ability to directly realize the real-time estimation of 3D shapes without neural networks, 3DGS has received a lot of attention in the fields of robotics, urban mapping, autonomous navigation, and virtual reality/augmented reality. In view of the growing popularity of 3DGS, we conduct a systematic review of the relevant literature. We begin by surveying existing work on 3D reconstruction and rendering, outlining the historical development and recent advances from both foundational and innovation-driven perspectives. Next, we summarize the most commonly used datasets and evaluation metrics in 3D reconstruction and rendering. Finally, we summarize the current challenges and suggest potential directions for future research. Through this survey, we aim to provide researchers with a treasure trove of resources in understanding and using techniques related to 3D reconstruction and rendering, in order to promote technological development and application deepening in the field of 3D vision.