Support animations using Scene->Open

[zzigak]

When attempting to follow https://github.com/playcanvas/supersplat/wiki/Animation-Preview to display dynamic Gaussian splatting, the timeline panel is not shown after splats are imported. Each individual .ply file can be viewed normally. Image below shows the problem (no timeline slider at the bottom):

[slimbuck]

Hi! You must be using supersplat v1.13.0 or later.

[zzigak]

Thanks! I did find that some of the splat files almost override other splat files. For example, when I try to display the visualization with the slider, set at 1 frame / s, for the first few splats there is no change displayed (even though when viewed individually, there is a noticeable difference), and the change is only seen in the last few splats. Any idea what could be happening here? Something similar happens if you start toggling displayed .ply files.

[slimbuck]

Not sure... How large are the ply's?

[zzigak]

Each around 300k Gaussians so each around 33MB.

[slimbuck]

That is quite large. So I would expect frames to load slowly, but sounds like the frames are not loading correctly. I will have to investigate. Thanks for reporting.

[zzigak]

Thanks for such a fast turnaround!

[michnaugh1]

I am having the same issue as zzigak. Thanks so much for looking into this.

[slimbuck]

Hmm I'm not able to reproduce this. What filenames are you using? Any chance you can send me the frames you're using?

[slimbuck]

Also can you check whether the correct files appear in the SCENE MANAGER panel? Does the name change, but the model doesn't? Or does the name not change?

[zzigak]

@slimbuck I tried sharing through WeTransfer. Did you get anything?

The files do appear in the scene manager panel. When I play the timeline, the names change from "splat_000x.ply" to "splat_x.ply", as they are cycled through.

[slimbuck]

Yes I did thank you! It seems to work fine for me, still can't repro.

Which platform are you using - OS, browser (and version), machine?

If you're able to create a video demonstrating the issue that'd be awesome too.

[zzigak]

@slimbuck I experimented with the viewer a bit more and I think I figured out some pointers.

• If you drag and drop a sequence of .ply files, then playing it will work fine.
• If you try to use the "upload file" option in the scene manager panel, then it will not work, that is, the timeline view will not appear as an option at the bottom of the screen. Might be good to specify more clearly in the docs.
• The bug was: I drag&dropped in 2 .ply files and then loaded in the rest of the .ply files using the upload file in the scene manger. For some reason this caused the timeline not to display the files uploaded using the file upload.

[zzigak]

Here is a demo of the bug explained above

record.mov

[slimbuck]

AHH yes this currently the case with scene open. I will fix this in some way when we figure out how.

The problem is what if a user wants to load a set of files named 0.ply, 1.ply, 2.ply, but not as an animation?

I'm thinking of perhaps adding a popup when animation sequence is detected (using any of the open methods) asking whether to load as files or an animation.