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IMAGE TO 3D · GAUSSIAN SPLATS

Image to 3D: one photo, a 3D Gaussian splat

Apple SHARP predicts a 3D Gaussian representation from a single photograph in under a second on a GPU and renders nearby viewpoints in real time. This page is the task-first guide: what you get, how to run it locally on Mac or CUDA, and how to view the result.

See official SHARP examplesGitHub

What you get

  • A .ply file of 3D Gaussians with metric scale, ready for splat viewers.
  • Real-time parallax around the original viewpoint—think 3D photos, not a full model.
  • Optional rendered camera-path videos on CUDA GPUs.

Run SHARP locally

  1. Create a Python 3.13 environment and install the official repository.
  2. Put one or more photos in an input folder.
  3. Run sharp predict; the checkpoint downloads on first use.
  4. Open the output .ply in a Gaussian-splat viewer.
Python 3.13 · official SHARP CLI 
conda create -n sharp python=3.13 -y
conda activate sharp
git clone https://github.com/apple-aiml-research/ml-sharp.git
cd ml-sharp
python -m pip install -r requirements.txt
sharp predict -i ./input -o ./output        # CPU, CUDA or MPS
sharp predict -i ./input -o ./output --render   # video rendering needs CUDA

Viewing the result

SHARP writes standard 3D Gaussian .ply files. Web-based splat viewers open them directly; SHARP uses OpenCV camera conventions, so check scale and orientation if a viewer shows the scene flipped.

Need a relightable asset instead?

Luce (Apple, August 2026) targets objects rather than scenes and predicts PBR materials—albedo, metallic-roughness and normals—so the asset can be relit and exported as a mesh. Code was not confirmed as public at the time of checking.

Luce →Luce vs SHARP →

Questions

Is this the same as photogrammetry?

No. Photogrammetry needs many photos and reconstructs the full object. SHARP infers a plausible 3D scene from one photo and is designed for nearby views only.

Can it run in the browser?

Generation runs locally with the official CLI; there is no in-browser inference. Viewing the .ply output in a web splat viewer works fine.

Does it work on iPhone?

Not as shipped; the reference implementation is a Python package for Mac and Linux. Render the result on a computer, then share the video or splat file.