Automatic Segmentation of 3D Gaussian Splatting in Cultural Heritage Complex

Abstract. 3D Gaussian Splatting (3DGS) has emerged as a promising method for photorealistic scene reconstructions, yet its application to semantic segmentation in real-world heritage documentation remains underexplored. This study proposes and evaluates an automated semantic 3DGS segmentation pipeline integrating the Segment Anything Model 3 (SAM 3) with per-class prompting for Gaussian reconstruction, applied to a nadiral UAV dataset of the Siti Inggil heritage complex in Cirebon, Indonesia. Segmentation performance of four semantic classes (ground, roofs, vegetations, and water bodies) were assessed against manually segmented 2D and 3D reference data, supplemented by geometric accuracy assessment via the M3C2 analysis. Results reveal both the promise and the inherent challenges of applying 3DGS segmentation to complex real-world heritage scenes, where acquisition geometry, surface characteristics, and foundational model limitations can be observed.