# Modeling Indirect Illumination for Inverse Rendering

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2204.06837 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2204.06837/

## Key facts

- Cited by 168 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 15 of its 31 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 14 Apr 2022.

## Builds on (most cited first, 15 of 15)

- [Adam: A Method for Stochastic Optimization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1412.6980/) (2014)
- [The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Deep Features as a Perceptual Metric](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1801.03924/) (2018)
- [NeuS: Learning Neural Implicit Surfaces by Volume Rendering for Multi-view Reconstruction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2106.10689/) (2021)
- [NeRV: Neural Reflectance and Visibility Fields for Relighting and View Synthesis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2012.03927/) (2020)
- [NeRD: Neural Reflectance Decomposition from Image Collections](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2012.03918/) (2020)
- [PhySG: Inverse Rendering with Spherical Gaussians for Physics-based Material Editing and Relighting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2104.00674/) (2021)
- [Inverse Rendering for Complex Indoor Scenes: Shape, Spatially-Varying Lighting and SVBRDF from a Single Image](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1905.02722/) (2019)
- [Neural Reflectance Fields for Appearance Acquisition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2008.03824/) (2020)
- [Neural Inverse Rendering of an Indoor Scene from a Single Image](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1901.02453/) (2019)
- [InverseRenderNet: Learning single image inverse rendering](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1811.12328/) (2018)
- [Deep Reflectance Volumes: Relightable Reconstructions from Multi-View Photometric Images](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2007.09892/) (2020)
- [Neural Light Transport for Relighting and View Synthesis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2008.03806/) (2020)
- [Deep 3D Capture: Geometry and Reflectance from Sparse Multi-View Images](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2003.12642/) (2020)
- [Shape and Material Capture at Home](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2104.06397/) (2021)
- [Object-based Illumination Estimation with Rendering-aware Neural Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2008.02514/) (2020)

## Built on by (most cited first, 30 of 168)

- [GS-IR: 3D Gaussian Splatting for Inverse Rendering](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.16473/) (2023)
- [TensoIR: Tensorial Inverse Rendering](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2304.12461/) (2023)
- [Shape, Light, and Material Decomposition from Images using Monte Carlo Rendering and Denoising](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2206.03380/) (2022)
- [NeRO: Neural Geometry and BRDF Reconstruction of Reflective Objects from Multiview Images](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.17398/) (2023)
- [High-quality Surface Reconstruction using Gaussian Surfels](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.17774/) (2024)
- [Relightable 3D Gaussians: Realistic Point Cloud Relighting with BRDF Decomposition and Ray Tracing](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.16043/) (2023)
- [Neural Gaffer: Relighting Any Object via Diffusion](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.07520/) (2024)
- [Neural Fields meet Explicit Geometric Representation for Inverse Rendering of Urban Scenes](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2304.03266/) (2023)
- [GIR: 3D Gaussian Inverse Rendering for Relightable Scene Factorization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.05133/) (2023)
- [IntrinsicAnything: Learning Diffusion Priors for Inverse Rendering Under Unknown Illumination](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.11593/) (2024)
- [ENVIDR: Implicit Differentiable Renderer with Neural Environment Lighting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.13022/) (2023)
- [Advances in 3D Generation: A Survey](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2401.17807/) (2024)
- [3D Gaussian Splatting with Deferred Reflection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.18454/) (2024)
- [Factor Fields: A Unified Framework for Neural Fields and Beyond](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2302.01226/) (2023)
- [Stanford-ORB: A Real-World 3D Object Inverse Rendering Benchmark](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2310.16044/) (2023)
- [IntrinsicNeRF: Learning Intrinsic Neural Radiance Fields for Editable Novel View Synthesis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2210.00647/) (2022)
- [DreamMat: High-quality PBR Material Generation with Geometry- and Light-aware Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2405.17176/) (2024)
- [Neural-PBIR Reconstruction of Shape, Material, and Illumination](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2304.13445/) (2023)
- [Relighting Neural Radiance Fields with Shadow and Highlight Hints](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2308.13404/) (2023)
- [GI-GS: Global Illumination Decomposition on Gaussian Splatting for Inverse Rendering](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.02619/) (2024)
- [DeferredGS: Decoupled and Editable Gaussian Splatting with Deferred Shading](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.09412/) (2024)
- [NeFII: Inverse Rendering for Reflectance Decomposition with Near-Field Indirect Illumination](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.16617/) (2023)
- [A Diffusion Approach to Radiance Field Relighting using Multi-Illumination Synthesis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2409.08947/) (2024)
- [NeMF: Inverse Volume Rendering with Neural Microflake Field](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2304.00782/) (2023)
- [OpenIllumination: A Multi-Illumination Dataset for Inverse Rendering Evaluation on Real Objects](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2309.07921/) (2023)
- [S3-NeRF: Neural Reflectance Field from Shading and Shadow under a Single Viewpoint](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2210.08936/) (2022)
- [Scalable, Detailed and Mask-Free Universal Photometric Stereo](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.15724/) (2023)
- [SpecNeRF: Gaussian Directional Encoding for Specular Reflections](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.13102/) (2023)
- [NeRFLiX: High-Quality Neural View Synthesis by Learning a Degradation-Driven Inter-viewpoint MiXer](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.06919/) (2023)
- [IllumiNeRF: 3D Relighting Without Inverse Rendering](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.06527/) (2024)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Recent advances in implicit neural representations and differentiable rendering make it possible to simultaneously recover the geometry and materials of an object from multi-view RGB images captured under unknown static illumination. Despite the promising results achieved, indirect illumination is rarely modeled in previous methods, as it requires expensive recursive path tracing which makes the inverse rendering computationally intractable. In this paper, we propose a novel approach to efficiently recovering spatially-varying indirect illumination. The key insight is that indirect illumination can be conveniently derived from the neural radiance field learned from input images instead of being estimated jointly with direct illumination and materials. By properly modeling the indirect illumination and visibility of direct illumination, interreflection- and shadow-free albedo can be recovered. The experiments on both synthetic and real data demonstrate the superior performance of our approach compared to previous work and its capability to synthesize realistic renderings under novel viewpoints and illumination. Our code and data are available at https://zju3dv.github.io/invrender/.
