# AR-NeRF: Unsupervised Learning of Depth and Defocus Effects from Natural Images with Aperture Rendering Neural Radiance Fields

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2206.06100 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2206.06100/

## Key facts

- Cited by 12 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 94 of its 123 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 13 Jun 2022.

## Builds on (most cited first, 30 of 94)

- [Deep Residual Learning for Image Recognition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1512.03385/) (2015)
- [Adam: A Method for Stochastic Optimization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1412.6980/) (2014)
- [U-Net: Convolutional Networks for Biomedical Image Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1505.04597/) (2015)
- [A Style-Based Generator Architecture for Generative Adversarial Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1812.04948/) (2018)
- [Generative Adversarial Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2203.00667/) (2022)
- [Rethinking the Inception Architecture for Computer Vision](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1512.00567/) (2015)
- [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)
- [Progressive Growing of GANs for Improved Quality, Stability, and Variation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1710.10196/) (2017)
- [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)
- [FiLM: Visual Reasoning with a General Conditioning Layer](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1709.07871/) (2017)
- [Implicit Neural Representations with Periodic Activation Functions](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2006.09661/) (2020)
- [Fourier Features Let Networks Learn High Frequency Functions in Low Dimensional Domains](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2006.10739/) (2020)
- [Occupancy Networks: Learning 3D Reconstruction in Function Space](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1812.03828/) (2018)
- [Improved Regularization of Convolutional Neural Networks with Cutout](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1708.04552/) (2017)
- [Demystifying MMD GANs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1801.01401/) (2018)
- [Depth Map Prediction from a Single Image using a Multi-Scale Deep Network](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1406.2283/) (2014)
- [Alias-Free Generative Adversarial Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2106.12423/) (2021)
- [FaceForensics++: Learning to Detect Manipulated Facial Images](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1901.08971/) (2019)
- [Learning Implicit Fields for Generative Shape Modeling](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1812.02822/) (2018)
- [PlenOctrees for Real-time Rendering of Neural Radiance Fields](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.14024/) (2021)
- [End-to-end Recovery of Human Shape and Pose](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1712.06584/) (2017)
- [Scene Representation Networks: Continuous 3D-Structure-Aware Neural Scene Representations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1906.01618/) (2019)
- [NeRF++: Analyzing and Improving Neural Radiance Fields](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2010.07492/) (2020)
- [Unsupervised Monocular Depth Estimation with Left-Right Consistency](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1609.03677/) (2016)
- [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)
- [Unsupervised Learning of Depth and Ego-Motion from Video](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1704.07813/) (2017)
- [Convolutional Occupancy Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2003.04618/) (2020)

## Built on by (most cited first, 12 of 12)

- [Improving Physics-Augmented Continuum Neural Radiance Field-Based Geometry-Agnostic System Identification with Lagrangian Particle Optimization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.04155/) (2024)
- [Hyperspectral Neural Radiance Fields](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.14839/) (2024)
- [Inverting the Imaging Process by Learning an Implicit Camera Model](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2304.12748/) (2023)
- [NaviNeRF: NeRF-based 3D Representation Disentanglement by Latent Semantic Navigation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2304.11342/) (2023)
- [AquaNeRF: Neural Radiance Fields in Underwater Media with Distractor Removal](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2502.16351/) (2025)
- [Strata-NeRF : Neural Radiance Fields for Stratified Scenes](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2308.10337/) (2023)
- [MIMO-NeRF: Fast Neural Rendering with Multi-input Multi-output Neural Radiance Fields](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2310.01821/) (2023)
- [Dynamic Neural Radiance Field From Defocused Monocular Video](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.05586/) (2024)
- [Structure from Collision](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.21335/) (2025)
- [Fine-grained Defocus Blur Control for Generative Image Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2510.06215/) (2025)
- [Depth-Consistent 3D Gaussian Splatting via Physical Defocus Modeling and Multi-View Geometric Supervision](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2511.10316/) (2025)
- [Survey on Controlable Image Synthesis with Deep Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2307.10275/) (2023)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Fully unsupervised 3D representation learning has gained attention owing to its advantages in data collection. A successful approach involves a viewpoint-aware approach that learns an image distribution based on generative models (e.g., generative adversarial networks (GANs)) while generating various view images based on 3D-aware models (e.g., neural radiance fields (NeRFs)). However, they require images with various views for training, and consequently, their application to datasets with few or limited viewpoints remains a challenge. As a complementary approach, an aperture rendering GAN (AR-GAN) that employs a defocus cue was proposed. However, an AR-GAN is a CNN-based model and represents a defocus independently from a viewpoint change despite its high correlation, which is one of the reasons for its performance. As an alternative to an AR-GAN, we propose an aperture rendering NeRF (AR-NeRF), which can utilize viewpoint and defocus cues in a unified manner by representing both factors in a common ray-tracing framework. Moreover, to learn defocus-aware and defocus-independent representations in a disentangled manner, we propose aperture randomized training, for which we learn to generate images while randomizing the aperture size and latent codes independently. During our experiments, we applied AR-NeRF to various natural image datasets, including flower, bird, and face images, the results of which demonstrate the utility of AR-NeRF for unsupervised learning of the depth and defocus effects.