# Nerfies: Deformable Neural Radiance Fields

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2011.12948 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2011.12948/

## Key facts

- Cited by 1,198 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- First posted on arXiv 25 Nov 2020.

## Built on by (most cited first, 30 of 1198)

- [DreamFusion: Text-to-3D using 2D Diffusion](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2209.14988/) (2022)
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- [4D Gaussian Splatting for Real-Time Dynamic Scene Rendering](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2310.08528/) (2023)
- [Deformable 3D Gaussians for High-Fidelity Monocular Dynamic Scene Reconstruction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2309.13101/) (2023)
- [K-Planes: Explicit Radiance Fields in Space, Time, and Appearance](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2301.10241/) (2023)
- [Dynamic 3D Gaussians: Tracking by Persistent Dynamic View Synthesis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2308.09713/) (2023)
- [Block-NeRF: Scalable Large Scene Neural View Synthesis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2202.05263/) (2022)
- [HexPlane: A Fast Representation for Dynamic Scenes](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2301.09632/) (2023)
- [Ref-NeRF: Structured View-Dependent Appearance for Neural Radiance Fields](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2112.03907/) (2021)
- [Neural Fields in Visual Computing and Beyond](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2111.11426/) (2021)
- [Point-NeRF: Point-based Neural Radiance Fields](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2201.08845/) (2022)
- [HumanNeRF: Free-viewpoint Rendering of Moving People from Monocular Video](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2201.04127/) (2022)
- [Neuralangelo: High-Fidelity Neural Surface Reconstruction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2306.03092/) (2023)
- [LangSplat: 3D Language Gaussian Splatting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.16084/) (2023)
- [Mega-NeRF: Scalable Construction of Large-Scale NeRFs for Virtual Fly-Throughs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2112.10703/) (2021)
- [PhysGaussian: Physics-Integrated 3D Gaussians for Generative Dynamics](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.12198/) (2023)
- [Advances in Neural Rendering](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2111.05849/) (2021)
- [SC-GS: Sparse-Controlled Gaussian Splatting for Editable Dynamic Scenes](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.14937/) (2023)
- [Fast Dynamic Radiance Fields with Time-Aware Neural Voxels](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2205.15285/) (2022)
- [Spacetime Gaussian Feature Splatting for Real-Time Dynamic View Synthesis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.16812/) (2023)
- [NeuS2: Fast Learning of Neural Implicit Surfaces for Multi-view Reconstruction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2212.05231/) (2022)
- [FreeNeRF: Improving Few-shot Neural Rendering with Free Frequency Regularization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.07418/) (2023)
- [Rodin: A Generative Model for Sculpting 3D Digital Avatars Using Diffusion](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2212.06135/) (2022)
- [UniSim: A Neural Closed-Loop Sensor Simulator](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2308.01898/) (2023)
- [GaussianAvatars: Photorealistic Head Avatars with Rigged 3D Gaussians](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.02069/) (2023)
- [Shape of Motion: 4D Reconstruction from a Single Video](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.13764/) (2024)
- [NeuMan: Neural Human Radiance Field from a Single Video](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2203.12575/) (2022)
- [Panoptic Neural Fields: A Semantic Object-Aware Neural Scene Representation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2205.04334/) (2022)
- [I M Avatar: Implicit Morphable Head Avatars from Videos](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2112.07471/) (2021)
- [Octree-GS: Towards Consistent Real-time Rendering with LOD-Structured 3D Gaussians](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.17898/) (2024)

## Abstract (arXiv)

We present the first method capable of photorealistically reconstructing deformable scenes using photos/videos captured casually from mobile phones. Our approach augments neural radiance fields (NeRF) by optimizing an additional continuous volumetric deformation field that warps each observed point into a canonical 5D NeRF. We observe that these NeRF-like deformation fields are prone to local minima, and propose a coarse-to-fine optimization method for coordinate-based models that allows for more robust optimization. By adapting principles from geometry processing and physical simulation to NeRF-like models, we propose an elastic regularization of the deformation field that further improves robustness. We show that our method can turn casually captured selfie photos/videos into deformable NeRF models that allow for photorealistic renderings of the subject from arbitrary viewpoints, which we dub "nerfies." We evaluate our method by collecting time-synchronized data using a rig with two mobile phones, yielding train/validation images of the same pose at different viewpoints. We show that our method faithfully reconstructs non-rigidly deforming scenes and reproduces unseen views with high fidelity.