buildoak

buildoak / tortuise

Public

Gaussian splats in your terminal.

70
5
100% credibility
Found Feb 25, 2026 at 60 stars -- GitGems finds repos before they trend. Get early access to the next one.
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AI Analysis
Rust
AI Summary

Tortuise is a terminal application that renders interactive 3D Gaussian splat scenes using Unicode characters and supports multiple visual styles without needing a graphics card.

How It Works

1
🖥️ Discover tortuise

You find this fun program that shows 3D models made of colorful symbols right in your terminal window.

2
💻 Get it ready

You easily install the viewer on your Mac or Linux computer with a quick setup.

3
Pick your scene
🎮
Try the demo

Jump in instantly with a beautiful built-in 3D scene.

📁
Load your file

Select a special 3D model file from your computer to view.

4
✨ See the 3D magic

The scene appears alive in your terminal, rendered with symbols and colors that look stunning.

5
🕹️ Fly around freely

Use simple keys like WASD and arrows to move, look, and explore the 3D world smoothly.

6
🎨 Switch styles

Press a key to change render modes, trying patterns like dots, braille, or blocks for fresh views.

🌟 Enjoy terminal 3D art

You now have a personal viewer for amazing 3D scenes anytime, all in your terminal.

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Star Growth

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AI-Generated Review

What is tortuise?

Tortuise renders Gaussian splats 3D scenes directly in your terminal using Unicode symbols, turning .ply or .splat files from tools like nerfstudio or Polycam into interactive views. Fire it up with `cargo install tortuise` then `tortuise --demo` for a built-in Luigi model, or load your own gaussian splats download with WASD navigation and orbit mode. Written in Rust atop crossterm and rayon, it handles 1.1M splats at 10-25 FPS on CPU alone, no GPU needed.

Why is it gaining traction?

It demos gaussian splatting from the gaussian splats paper in pure terminal—no browsers, no heavy viewers—across macOS/Linux with truecolor or 256-color fallback. Six modes like halfblock or braille plus supersampling give visual variety, and axis flips fix common gaussian splats blender/unity/unreal mismatches. The zero-setup `--demo` hooks devs fast, blending ratatui TUI polish with novel 3D.

Who should use this?

3D researchers tweaking gaussian splatting inria github outputs or converting gaussian splats to mesh for esri/unity. Terminal fans visualizing gaussian avatars github experiments. Rust CLI builders wanting a gaussian splats viewer for quick previews without Electron bloat.

Verdict

Grab it for playful gaussian splats unity/windows tests—solid docs, MIT license, crates.io ready—but 19 stars and 1.0% credibility signal early maturity; expect bugs on big scenes. Ideal toy project, not production viewer yet.

(198 words)

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