gs_final, 4000 iterations) with 12000 iterations and a gaussian cap of 100,000 — the only change of the quality experiment that passed its review. Other changes (frame selection, water and motion-blur models, white balance, lossless crops) did not. The two turntables play in sync (same orbit and timing).
| metric | v1 gs_final | v2 gs_v2 | change |
|---|---|---|---|
| iterations | 4000 | 12000 | |
| gaussians | 15,329 | 20,800 | x1.36 |
| training time (optimisation) | 20 min | 75 min | |
| held-out frames (within 0.3 s of a training frame) | 45 (0) | 45 (0) | |
| LPIPS on the fish (lower = closer to the photo) | 0.1806 | 0.1758 | -0.0047 |
| PSNR full crop (dB) | 22.38 | 22.47 | +0.09 |
| PSNR on the fish mask (dB) | 18.79 | 18.89 | +0.09 |
| sharpness ratio render / photo, grain-robust (1 = as sharp as the photo) | 0.109 | 0.136 | x1.25 |
| sharpness ratio, raw | 0.050 | 0.071 | x1.43 |
| sharp match (photo detail reproduced in place) | 0.013 | 0.017 | +0.004 |
| IoU with the SAM mask | 0.893 | 0.895 | +0.003 |
Verdict: better. LPIPS -0.0047, grain-robust sharpness x1.25 (sharper). Differences below 0.0034 LPIPS or x1.12 sharpness are within the run-to-run noise of training.
Held-out frames: fixed per fish (work/quality_exp/<fish>/heldout.json), evaluated identically for both models (test-time fit of pose, colour and bending with the gaussians frozen). Both models were trained on all frames of the same data set, so held-out frames near a training frame favour both equally; this is a like-for-like comparison of the two recipes, not a generalisation test.
Family: Serranidae 93%, Labridae 4%, Scaridae 1% · agreement across crops 94% · 64 crops · bioclip-2.5 (hf-hub:imageomics/bioclip-2.5-vith14, open_clip, zero-shot)

| window | 40:00 – 48:00 |
| visits | 11: 40:08-40:11, 40:42-40:51, 41:00-41:00, 41:04-41:46, 41:49-42:08, 42:50-42:54, 43:02-44:24, 44:26-44:52, 44:55-46:32, 46:46-47:12, 47:22-48:00 |
| frames (10 fps) detected / kept | 3261 / 3259 |
| valid poses (10 fps) | 3234 |
| frames with background plate | 2753 |
| median size | 134.0 px |
| 30 fps frames / valid poses | 721 / 706 |
| method | 4D GS, fins + bending + tail (30 fps) |
| model shown | v2 (gs_v2, quality experiment rollout) |
| iterations | 12000 |
| gaussians | 20800 |
| training time | 75 min |
| trainer validation PSNR full / masked | 24.4 / 22.2 dB |
| trainer validation IoU vs SAM mask | 0.836 |
| near-fish band PSNR (fins) | 23.7 dB |
| production status | done |
| visual note (curation) | brown grouper (same species as w48 fish1 |






point_cloud.ply (canonical 3D gaussians) · poses_refined.json · model.pt (incl. per-frame 4D params) · species.json · previous version v1: gs_final point_cloud.ply