# 3D Shape Reconstruction from Free-Hand Sketches

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2006.09694 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2006.09694/

## Key facts

- Cited by 20 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- First posted on arXiv 17 Jun 2020.

## Built on by (most cited first, 20 of 20)

- [Sketch2Model: View-Aware 3D Modeling from Single Free-Hand Sketches](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2105.06663/) (2021)
- [MedShapeNet -- A Large-Scale Dataset of 3D Medical Shapes for Computer Vision](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2308.16139/) (2023)
- [SketchLattice: Latticed Representation for Sketch Manipulation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2108.11636/) (2021)
- [SketchSampler: Sketch-based 3D Reconstruction via View-dependent Depth Sampling](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2208.06880/) (2022)
- [Sketch-A-Shape: Zero-Shot Sketch-to-3D Shape Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2307.03869/) (2023)
- [SEVA: Leveraging sketches to evaluate alignment between human and machine visual abstraction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.03035/) (2023)
- [3D VR Sketch Guided 3D Shape Prototyping and Exploration](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2306.10830/) (2023)
- [Vitruvio: 3D Building Meshes via Single Perspective Sketches](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2210.13634/) (2022)
- [Deep3DSketch+: Rapid 3D Modeling from Single Free-hand Sketches](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2309.13006/) (2023)
- [Unsupervised Scene Sketch to Photo Synthesis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2209.02834/) (2022)
- [SketchMetaFace: A Learning-based Sketching Interface for High-fidelity 3D Character Face Modeling](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2307.00804/) (2023)
- [GroundUp: Rapid Sketch-Based 3D City Massing](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.12739/) (2024)
- [Interactive Sketching of Mannequin Poses](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2212.07098/) (2022)
- [VRsketch2Gaussian: 3D VR Sketch Guided 3D Object Generation with Gaussian Splatting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.12383/) (2025)
- [Deep Sketch-Based 3D Modeling: A Survey](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.03287/) (2026)
- [Deep Learning Assisted Optimization for 3D Reconstruction from Single 2D Line Drawings](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2209.02692/) (2022)
- [From Air to Wear: Personalized 3D Digital Fashion with AR/VR Immersive 3D Sketching](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.09998/) (2025)
- [Sketch2CAD: 3D CAD Model Reconstruction from 2D Sketch using Visual Transformer](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2309.16850/) (2023)
- [SketchBodyNet: A Sketch-Driven Multi-faceted Decoder Network for 3D Human Reconstruction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2310.06577/) (2023)
- [Order Matters: 3D Shape Generation from Sequential VR Sketches](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2512.04761/) (2025)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Sketches are the most abstract 2D representations of real-world objects. Although a sketch usually has geometrical distortion and lacks visual cues, humans can effortlessly envision a 3D object from it. This suggests that sketches encode the information necessary for reconstructing 3D shapes. Despite great progress achieved in 3D reconstruction from distortion-free line drawings, such as CAD and edge maps, little effort has been made to reconstruct 3D shapes from free-hand sketches. We study this task and aim to enhance the power of sketches in 3D-related applications such as interactive design and VR/AR games. Unlike previous works, which mostly study distortion-free line drawings, our 3D shape reconstruction is based on free-hand sketches. A major challenge for free-hand sketch 3D reconstruction comes from the insufficient training data and free-hand sketch diversity, e.g. individualized sketching styles. We thus propose data generation and standardization mechanisms. Instead of distortion-free line drawings, synthesized sketches are adopted as input training data. Additionally, we propose a sketch standardization module to handle different sketch distortions and styles. Extensive experiments demonstrate the effectiveness of our model and its strong generalizability to various free-hand sketches. Our code is publicly available at https://github.com/samaonline/3D-Shape-Reconstruction-from-Free-Hand-Sketches.