Announcing Leighton 1.0 Free: Gaussian Splatting at No Cost
Announcement · 2026-07-26 · 5 min read · by SplatMart Team
SplatMart now generates Gaussian splats for free. Leighton 1.0 Free runs the same full-budget reconstruction as our flagship paid model, on captures of up to 40 photos, twice a week, with no card required.
Starting today, you can generate a Gaussian splat on SplatMart without paying anything. Leighton 1.0 Free gives every account two generations a week, on captures of up to 40 photos, with no credit card, no subscription, and no trial countdown.
The part we care most about: it is not a stripped-down preview model. Leighton 1.0 Free runs the same full training schedule as Leighton 1.0, our flagship paid tier. Same reconstruction pipeline, same camera solve, same automatic cleanup, same editable PLY at the end.
What you get
- Two free generations per account, per week, on a rolling seven-day window.
- Up to 40 photos per capture.
- The full Leighton 1.0 training schedule, not a reduced preview budget.
- An editable PLY you own, openable in the browser editor and publishable to the marketplace.
- No card, no subscription, no watermark.
Why 40 photos, and why two a week
Being straight about the trade-off is more useful than pretending there isn't one. Generating a splat costs us real GPU time, so a free tier has to be bounded somewhere. We chose to bound the inputs rather than the quality.
That choice is not arbitrary. Most of a generation's cost is the training run, and training cost barely changes with the number of photos. The camera-solve step is the opposite: its cost grows faster than the photo count, so a 430-photo capture spends several minutes solving cameras where a 40-photo capture spends well under one. Capping inputs removes most of the expense while leaving the training schedule, the part that determines how the result actually looks, completely intact.
The second lever is hardware. Free generations run on a smaller, cheaper class of GPU than paid jobs, in their own queue. The reconstruction is identical; it simply takes longer to arrive, typically around 35 minutes rather than 20, and longer still when the free queue is busy.
So what do the paid tiers buy?
Scale and speed, not a better model.
- Leighton 1.0 Lite (200 credits): a shorter training schedule for quick previews, on captures up to 3,000 inputs.
- Leighton 1.0 (400 credits): the same training schedule as Free, but on captures up to 3,000 photos or video frames, on faster GPUs, in the priority queue.
- Leighton 1.0 Max (600 credits): the largest training budget with the full camera solve on large captures, for sets above 120 photos.
There is still no subscription anywhere on SplatMart. Paid generations are charged per job, the first 500 inputs are included in the base price, and every started block of 50 inputs above that adds 10% of the model's base price. You always see the full quote before you commit.
Getting a good result from 40 photos
Forty photos is genuinely enough for a single object, a piece of furniture, a vehicle, a statue, or a small room, as long as the coverage is deliberate. A few things matter far more than the count:
- Orbit the subject completely rather than shooting from one side. Gaps in the camera path become gaps in the splat.
- Shoot at two or three heights, not one. A single ring of photos leaves the top and underside unconstrained.
- Lock your exposure. Auto-exposure swings between frames are the single most common cause of translucent patches and holes in walls.
- Move slowly and keep roughly 70% overlap between neighbouring frames so the camera solve can chain them together.
- Avoid mirrors, large glass panes, and featureless surfaces where you can, since they have no stable features to match against.
If you are new to capture, the photos-to-3D-model guide walks through the whole process in more detail.
What happens to your free splats
They are yours. A free generation produces the same editable PLY as a paid one, saved to My Splats under your account. You can open it in the browser editor to remove floaters and crop the bounds, download it, or list it for sale on the marketplace. Free generations carry no watermark and no licensing restriction that paid generations do not.
Start now
Sign in, open Create, upload up to 40 photos, and pick Leighton 1.0 Free. The card is greyed out with the reason shown if the capture is too large or you have used both generations this week, so you will never be charged by surprise.
Frequently asked questions
Is Leighton 1.0 Free really free?
Yes. Two generations per account per week, no credit card, no subscription, and no trial expiry. There is nothing to cancel.
Is the quality worse than the paid tiers?
No. Leighton 1.0 Free runs the same full training schedule as Leighton 1.0, the flagship paid model. The limits are on capture size and queue speed, not on reconstruction quality.
How many photos can I upload to the free tier?
Up to 40 photos per generation. Larger captures need a paid model, which accepts up to 3,000 photos or sampled video frames.
When does my free quota reset?
It is a rolling seven-day window rather than a fixed weekly reset. Each free generation frees its slot again seven days after you started it, so you never have to wait for a particular day.
Why does a free generation take longer?
Free jobs run on a smaller, cheaper class of GPU in their own queue. The reconstruction is identical, roughly 35 minutes of processing instead of 20, plus any time spent waiting in the free queue.
Can I sell a splat I generated for free?
Yes. Free generations produce the same editable PLY as paid ones and can be published to the SplatMart marketplace with no extra restriction or watermark.
Do failed generations use up my quota?
No. A generation only counts against your weekly limit if it actually reached the GPU. If a job fails on our side or you cancel it, the slot comes back.