I'm having a hard time matching these with some of the 3D things I've done before. As in, little vendiagram overlap.

What I'm used to, using hardware APIs, or software rendering: - Nodes - Edges - Triangles - Meshes - Shaders - Matrices - Quaternions (Or bivectors etc) - Projection (3d state to 2d screen)

I suppose I'm confused because the basics don't seem cosmic. It's a straightforward application of considering the state you need to store your 3D model in, then some linear algebra and quaternion operations to convert that 3d state to a 2d screen.

For quality level seen in media, it's different; all the additional techniques that make things realistic or have effects that get complicated. I suspect this is where the disconnect lies; if so, I suppose my point is that it's not 3D that's complicated; it's realistic 3D.

edit: I Looked up Gaussian Splats: Very cool!