# Generative Occupancy Fields for 3D Surface-Aware Image Synthesis

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2111.00969 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2111.00969/

## Key facts

- Cited by 51 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 39 of its 48 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 1 Nov 2021.

## Builds on (most cited first, 30 of 39)

- [A Style-Based Generator Architecture for Generative Adversarial Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1812.04948/) (2018)
- [Deep Learning Face Attributes in the Wild](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1411.7766/) (2014)
- [Analyzing and Improving the Image Quality of StyleGAN](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1912.04958/) (2019)
- [DeepSDF: Learning Continuous Signed Distance Functions for Shape Representation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1901.05103/) (2019)
- [Large Scale GAN Training for High Fidelity Natural Image Synthesis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1809.11096/) (2018)
- [Implicit Neural Representations with Periodic Activation Functions](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2006.09661/) (2020)
- [Occupancy Networks: Learning 3D Reconstruction in Function Space](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1812.03828/) (2018)
- [NeuS: Learning Neural Implicit Surfaces by Volume Rendering for Multi-view Reconstruction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2106.10689/) (2021)
- [Learning Implicit Fields for Generative Shape Modeling](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1812.02822/) (2018)
- [Volume Rendering of Neural Implicit Surfaces](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2106.12052/) (2021)
- [Neural Sparse Voxel Fields](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2007.11571/) (2020)
- [PlenOctrees for Real-time Rendering of Neural Radiance Fields](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.14024/) (2021)
- [Scene Representation Networks: Continuous 3D-Structure-Aware Neural Scene Representations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1906.01618/) (2019)
- [PIFu: Pixel-Aligned Implicit Function for High-Resolution Clothed Human Digitization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1905.05172/) (2019)
- [GIRAFFE: Representing Scenes as Compositional Generative Neural Feature Fields](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2011.12100/) (2020)
- [pi-GAN: Periodic Implicit Generative Adversarial Networks for 3D-Aware Image Synthesis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2012.00926/) (2020)
- [Differentiable Volumetric Rendering: Learning Implicit 3D Representations without 3D Supervision](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1912.07372/) (2019)
- [GRAF: Generative Radiance Fields for 3D-Aware Image Synthesis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2007.02442/) (2020)
- [UNISURF: Unifying Neural Implicit Surfaces and Radiance Fields for Multi-View Reconstruction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2104.10078/) (2021)
- [Learning a Probabilistic Latent Space of Object Shapes via 3D Generative-Adversarial Modeling](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1610.07584/) (2016)
- [PIFuHD: Multi-Level Pixel-Aligned Implicit Function for High-Resolution 3D Human Digitization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2004.00452/) (2020)
- [NeRV: Neural Reflectance and Visibility Fields for Relighting and View Synthesis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2012.03927/) (2020)
- [Baking Neural Radiance Fields for Real-Time View Synthesis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.14645/) (2021)
- [NeRD: Neural Reflectance Decomposition from Image Collections](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2012.03918/) (2020)
- [Learning Shape Templates with Structured Implicit Functions](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1904.06447/) (2019)
- [DONeRF: Towards Real-Time Rendering of Compact Neural Radiance Fields using Depth Oracle Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.03231/) (2021)
- [MetaSDF: Meta-learning Signed Distance Functions](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2006.09662/) (2020)
- [Unsupervised Learning of Probably Symmetric Deformable 3D Objects from Images in the Wild](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1911.11130/) (2019)
- [DIST: Rendering Deep Implicit Signed Distance Function with Differentiable Sphere Tracing](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1911.13225/) (2019)
- [BlockGAN: Learning 3D Object-aware Scene Representations from Unlabelled Images](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2002.08988/) (2020)

## Built on by (most cited first, 30 of 51)

- [Neural Fields in Visual Computing and Beyond](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2111.11426/) (2021)
- [Advances in Neural Rendering](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2111.05849/) (2021)
- [StyleSDF: High-Resolution 3D-Consistent Image and Geometry Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2112.11427/) (2021)
- [Dream3D: Zero-Shot Text-to-3D Synthesis Using 3D Shape Prior and Text-to-Image Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2212.14704/) (2022)
- [VoxGRAF: Fast 3D-Aware Image Synthesis with Sparse Voxel Grids](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2206.07695/) (2022)
- [Semantic-Aware Implicit Neural Audio-Driven Video Portrait Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2201.07786/) (2022)
- [3D-aware Image Synthesis via Learning Structural and Textural Representations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2112.10759/) (2021)
- [Pix2NeRF: Unsupervised Conditional π-GAN for Single Image to Neural Radiance Fields Translation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2202.13162/) (2022)
- [GRAM-HD: 3D-Consistent Image Generation at High Resolution with Generative Radiance Manifolds](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2206.07255/) (2022)
- [DisCoScene: Spatially Disentangled Generative Radiance Fields for Controllable 3D-aware Scene Synthesis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2212.11984/) (2022)
- [GeCoNeRF: Few-shot Neural Radiance Fields via Geometric Consistency](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2301.10941/) (2023)
- [Cross-Ray Neural Radiance Fields for Novel-view Synthesis from Unconstrained Image Collections](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2307.08093/) (2023)
- [AniFaceGAN: Animatable 3D-Aware Face Image Generation for Video Avatars](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2210.06465/) (2022)
- [Disentangled3D: Learning a 3D Generative Model with Disentangled Geometry and Appearance from Monocular Images](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2203.15926/) (2022)
- [Controllable 3D Face Synthesis with Conditional Generative Occupancy Fields](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2206.08361/) (2022)
- [OmniAvatar: Geometry-Guided Controllable 3D Head Synthesis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.15539/) (2023)
- [3D-Aware Semantic-Guided Generative Model for Human Synthesis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2112.01422/) (2021)
- [DiffPortrait3D: Controllable Diffusion for Zero-Shot Portrait View Synthesis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.13016/) (2023)
- [DaRF: Boosting Radiance Fields from Sparse Inputs with Monocular Depth Adaptation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.19201/) (2023)
- [AI-Generated Content (AIGC) for Various Data Modalities: A Survey](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2308.14177/) (2023)
- [Mimic3D: Thriving 3D-Aware GANs via 3D-to-2D Imitation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.09036/) (2023)
- [3D-Aware Video Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2206.14797/) (2022)
- [Compositional Generative Model of Unbounded 4D Cities](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2501.08983/) (2025)
- [A Survey on Deep Generative 3D-aware Image Synthesis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2210.14267/) (2022)
- [IR-MCL: Implicit Representation-Based Online Global Localization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2210.03113/) (2022)
- [Learning 3D-aware Image Synthesis with Unknown Pose Distribution](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2301.07702/) (2023)
- [DiffPortrait360: Consistent Portrait Diffusion for 360 View Synthesis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.15667/) (2025)
- [Diffusion Models in 3D Vision: A Survey](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.04738/) (2024)
- [GAN2X: Non-Lambertian Inverse Rendering of Image GANs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2206.09244/) (2022)
- [BlobGAN-3D: A Spatially-Disentangled 3D-Aware Generative Model for Indoor Scenes](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.14706/) (2023)

## Abstract (arXiv)

The advent of generative radiance fields has significantly promoted the development of 3D-aware image synthesis. The cumulative rendering process in radiance fields makes training these generative models much easier since gradients are distributed over the entire volume, but leads to diffused object surfaces. In the meantime, compared to radiance fields occupancy representations could inherently ensure deterministic surfaces. However, if we directly apply occupancy representations to generative models, during training they will only receive sparse gradients located on object surfaces and eventually suffer from the convergence problem. In this paper, we propose Generative Occupancy Fields (GOF), a novel model based on generative radiance fields that can learn compact object surfaces without impeding its training convergence. The key insight of GOF is a dedicated transition from the cumulative rendering in radiance fields to rendering with only the surface points as the learned surface gets more and more accurate. In this way, GOF combines the merits of two representations in a unified framework. In practice, the training-time transition of start from radiance fields and march to occupancy representations is achieved in GOF by gradually shrinking the sampling region in its rendering process from the entire volume to a minimal neighboring region around the surface. Through comprehensive experiments on multiple datasets, we demonstrate that GOF can synthesize high-quality images with 3D consistency and simultaneously learn compact and smooth object surfaces. Code, models, and demo videos are available at https://sheldontsui.github.io/projects/GOF