# Critical Regularizations for Neural Surface Reconstruction in the Wild

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2206.03087 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2206.03087/

## Key facts

- Cited by 52 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 19 of its 34 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 7 Jun 2022.

## Builds on (most cited first, 19 of 19)

- [Delving Deep into Rectifiers: Surpassing Human-Level Performance on ImageNet Classification](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1502.01852/) (2015)
- [DeepSDF: Learning Continuous Signed Distance Functions for Shape Representation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1901.05103/) (2019)
- [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)
- [Volume Rendering of Neural Implicit Surfaces](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2106.12052/) (2021)
- [PIFu: Pixel-Aligned Implicit Function for High-Resolution Clothed Human Digitization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1905.05172/) (2019)
- [MVSNet: Depth Inference for Unstructured Multi-view Stereo](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1804.02505/) (2018)
- [Convolutional Occupancy Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2003.04618/) (2020)
- [Open3D: A Modern Library for 3D Data Processing](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1801.09847/) (2018)
- [Differentiable Volumetric Rendering: Learning Implicit 3D Representations without 3D Supervision](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1912.07372/) (2019)
- [UNISURF: Unifying Neural Implicit Surfaces and Radiance Fields for Multi-View Reconstruction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2104.10078/) (2021)
- [PIFuHD: Multi-Level Pixel-Aligned Implicit Function for High-Resolution 3D Human Digitization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2004.00452/) (2020)
- [BlendedMVS: A Large-scale Dataset for Generalized Multi-view Stereo Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1911.10127/) (2019)
- [DIST: Rendering Deep Implicit Signed Distance Function with Differentiable Sphere Tracing](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1911.13225/) (2019)
- [Neural Lumigraph Rendering](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.11571/) (2021)
- [Learning to Infer Implicit Surfaces without 3D Supervision](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1911.00767/) (2019)
- [Visibility-aware Multi-view Stereo Network](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2008.07928/) (2020)
- [Learning Signed Distance Field for Multi-view Surface Reconstruction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2108.09964/) (2021)

## Built on by (most cited first, 30 of 52)

- [Neuralangelo: High-Fidelity Neural Surface Reconstruction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2306.03092/) (2023)
- [High-quality Surface Reconstruction using Gaussian Surfels](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.17774/) (2024)
- [NeuSG: Neural Implicit Surface Reconstruction with 3D Gaussian Splatting Guidance](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.00846/) (2023)
- [SelfOcc: Self-Supervised Vision-Based 3D Occupancy Prediction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.12754/) (2023)
- [StreetSurf: Extending Multi-view Implicit Surface Reconstruction to Street Views](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2306.04988/) (2023)
- [Neural Kernel Surface Reconstruction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.19590/) (2023)
- [NeILF++: Inter-Reflectable Light Fields for Geometry and Material Estimation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.17147/) (2023)
- [GS2Mesh: Surface Reconstruction from Gaussian Splatting via Novel Stereo Views](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.01810/) (2024)
- [VolRecon: Volume Rendering of Signed Ray Distance Functions for Generalizable Multi-View Reconstruction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2212.08067/) (2022)
- [Neural Signed Distance Function Inference through Splatting 3D Gaussians Pulled on Zero-Level Set](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.14189/) (2024)
- [Neural-PBIR Reconstruction of Shape, Material, and Illumination](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2304.13445/) (2023)
- [Neural-Singular-Hessian: Implicit Neural Representation of Unoriented Point Clouds by Enforcing Singular Hessian](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2309.01793/) (2023)
- [GaussianRoom: Improving 3D Gaussian Splatting with SDF Guidance and Monocular Cues for Indoor Scene Reconstruction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2405.19671/) (2024)
- [Structured 3D Features for Reconstructing Controllable Avatars](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2212.06820/) (2022)
- [PoRF: Pose Residual Field for Accurate Neural Surface Reconstruction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2310.07449/) (2023)
- [SparseCraft: Few-Shot Neural Reconstruction through Stereopsis Guided Geometric Linearization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.14257/) (2024)
- [Learning-based Multi-View Stereo: A Survey](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2408.15235/) (2024)
- [Recovering Fine Details for Neural Implicit Surface Reconstruction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2211.11320/) (2022)
- [PBR-NeRF: Inverse Rendering with Physics-Based Neural Fields](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2412.09680/) (2024)
- [Gaussian Splatting with Discretized SDF for Relightable Assets](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2507.15629/) (2025)
- [NeurCADRecon: Neural Representation for Reconstructing CAD Surfaces by Enforcing Zero Gaussian Curvature](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.13420/) (2024)
- [Neural Radiance Fields for the Real World: A Survey](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2501.13104/) (2025)
- [NeRFPrior: Learning Neural Radiance Field as a Prior for Indoor Scene Reconstruction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.18361/) (2025)
- [GS-ROR2: Bidirectional-guided 3DGS and SDF for Reflective Object Relighting and Reconstruction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.18544/) (2024)
- [p-Poisson surface reconstruction in curl-free flow from point clouds](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2310.20095/) (2023)
- [Spurfies: Sparse Surface Reconstruction using Local Geometry Priors](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2408.16544/) (2024)
- [PVP-Recon: Progressive View Planning via Warping Consistency for Sparse-View Surface Reconstruction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2409.05474/) (2024)
- [HotSpot: Signed Distance Function Optimization with an Asymptotically Sufficient Condition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2411.14628/) (2024)
- [DiViNeT: 3D Reconstruction from Disparate Views via Neural Template Regularization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2306.04699/) (2023)
- [SplatSDF: Boosting SDF-NeRF via Architecture-Level Fusion with Gaussian Splats](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2411.15468/) (2024)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Neural implicit functions have recently shown promising results on surface reconstructions from multiple views. However, current methods still suffer from excessive time complexity and poor robustness when reconstructing unbounded or complex scenes. In this paper, we present RegSDF, which shows that proper point cloud supervisions and geometry regularizations are sufficient to produce high-quality and robust reconstruction results. Specifically, RegSDF takes an additional oriented point cloud as input, and optimizes a signed distance field and a surface light field within a differentiable rendering framework. We also introduce the two critical regularizations for this optimization. The first one is the Hessian regularization that smoothly diffuses the signed distance values to the entire distance field given noisy and incomplete input. And the second one is the minimal surface regularization that compactly interpolates and extrapolates the missing geometry. Extensive experiments are conducted on DTU, BlendedMVS, and Tanks and Temples datasets. Compared with recent neural surface reconstruction approaches, RegSDF is able to reconstruct surfaces with fine details even for open scenes with complex topologies and unstructured camera trajectories.