Kiri's Blender Add On Still Can't Relight a Splat, and That's Fine

Kiri Engine's free 3DGS Render add on for Blender just moved to version 4.0, and the update people actually asked for, lighting baked into a Gaussian splat scan finally responding to a scene's other lights, still is not fully there. What shipped instead is a faster edit to render pipeline and experimental light baking from a proxy mesh onto the splat, plus the only Eevee integration currently available for this kind of asset in Blender.

That gap matters more than a feature list suggests. A splat scan captures light as part of the geometry, baked in from whatever the scanner saw on the day. Drop that scan into a scene with a different sun angle, or add a character standing next to it, and the mismatch is immediate and hard to hide. Real relighting, treating a splat like a normal 3D object that responds to new light sources, is still the unsolved problem across the entire splatting toolchain, not just Kiri's corner of it.

We use scan based assets often enough that this limitation shapes how we plan a shoot. If a splat needs to sit in more than one lighting setup down the line, we still capture reference photography and build a conventional textured mesh alongside the scan, rather than betting on relighting tools that are not there yet. Kiri's add on is a genuine step forward for anyone rendering splats as is. It is not yet the tool that lets you drop a scan into any scene and trust the light.