- Crysta can make a 3D printed model of a Gaussian Splat
- The level of detail is quite remarkable
- It doesn’t come cheap, but this is jailhouse stuff nonetheless
Have you ever wanted to take a real-life scene and shrink it into a snow globe-style model (minus the snow) to sit on your shelf, preserved forever?
Well, maybe not forever, but you get the idea, and it’s possible to do this now thanks to a company called Crysta.
Like Dany Bittel explains on Patreon, Crysta offered to turn one of their ‘Gaussian Splats’ – of a bee – into a representation of the insect courtesy of a 3D printer.
@Crysta_AI printed one of my bees as a gift! pic.twitter.com/HENIVMXaMJ18 June 2026
The result, as you can see in the post on X above, is quite spectacular. But wait a minute, I hear you ask (probably): a Gaussian what-now? If you’re not familiar with the concept of a Gaussian Splat, it’s a 3D model of a real place or thing, built from video footage that you’ve shot on your camera (or maybe a drone for more adventurous builds).
We previously covered how this works in an in-depth article where we used a cloud-based service called Splatica to make our Splat, and suffice it to say, it’s a very cool process with impressive results.
Going one step further with the impressive, however, is to take the Gaussian Splat model and 3D print it. (Crysta can also do this with an alternative process, Neural Radiance Fields or NeRF).
How is the model turned (back) into a physical representation? Bittel notes that: “The Gaussian splat is first voxelized, a bit like a Minecraft level. Each voxel has a mixture of ink and can be more or less transparent. This is then printed on [a] special 3D printer, layer by layer.”
Cubic price
As Bittel notes, this is like a modern version of the fly trapped in amber, except that it is an entirely artificial construct, built from an artificial model. I absolutely love the idea, and if you do too, you might be wondering how much it costs.
The truth is, it’s not cheap, as you might guess. You’ll have to pay for a Splatica subscription if you go the way TechRadar did, which is quite expensive (or use a similar service or app).
The actual printing of the model by The Crysta will run something like $140 in the US for a 30mm cube, according to Bittel as a suggested retail price (they got one for free as a gift, in case you were wondering). You can go up to a 300mm cube if you want an ornament with a real impact on your room (and probably your wallet too).
The company ships the 3D printed models globally, although of course it will cost more to ship outside the US.
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