Decoupling Motion and Geometry in 4D Gaussian Splatting

Abstract: High-fidelity reconstruction of dynamic scenes is an important yet challenging problem. While recent 4D Gaussian Splatting (4DGS) has demonstrated the ability to model temporal dynamics, it couples Gaussian motion and geometric attributes within a single covariance formulation, which limits its expressiveness for complex motions and often leads to visual artifacts. To address this, we propose VeGaS, a novel velocity-based 4D Gaussian Splatting framework that decouples Gaussian motion and geometry. Specifically, we introduce a Galilean shearing matrix that explicitly incorporates time-varying velocity to flexibly model complex non-linear motions, while strictly isolating the effects of Gaussian motion from the geometry-related conditional Gaussian covariance. Furthermore, a Geometric Deformation Network is introduced to refine Gaussian shapes and orientations using spatio-temporal context and velocity cues, enhancing temporal geometric modeling. Extensive experiments on public datasets demonstrate that VeGaS achieves state-of-the-art performance.