# Diffusion-SDF: Text-to-Shape via Voxelized Diffusion

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2212.03293 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2212.03293/

## Key facts

- Cited by 128 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 54 of its 61 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 6 Dec 2022.

## Builds on (most cited first, 30 of 54)

- [Attention Is All You Need](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1706.03762/) (2017)
- [Deep Residual Learning for Image Recognition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1512.03385/) (2015)
- [Learning Transferable Visual Models From Natural Language Supervision](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.00020/) (2021)
- [Denoising Diffusion Probabilistic Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2006.11239/) (2020)
- [U-Net: Convolutional Networks for Biomedical Image Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1505.04597/) (2015)
- [High-Resolution Image Synthesis with Latent Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2112.10752/) (2021)
- [Denoising Diffusion Implicit Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2010.02502/) (2020)
- [Diffusion Models Beat GANs on Image Synthesis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2105.05233/) (2021)
- [Deep Unsupervised Learning using Nonequilibrium Thermodynamics](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1503.03585/) (2015)
- [Hierarchical Text-Conditional Image Generation with CLIP Latents](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2204.06125/) (2022)
- [Photorealistic Text-to-Image Diffusion Models with Deep Language Understanding](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2205.11487/) (2022)
- [Classifier-Free Diffusion Guidance](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2207.12598/) (2022)
- [Generative Adversarial Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2203.00667/) (2022)
- [PointNet: Deep Learning on Point Sets for 3D Classification and Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1612.00593/) (2016)
- [PointNet++: Deep Hierarchical Feature Learning on Point Sets in a Metric Space](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1706.02413/) (2017)
- [Zero-Shot Text-to-Image Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2102.12092/) (2021)
- [GLIDE: Towards Photorealistic Image Generation and Editing with Text-Guided Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2112.10741/) (2021)
- [ShapeNet: An Information-Rich 3D Model Repository](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1512.03012/) (2015)
- [DeepSDF: Learning Continuous Signed Distance Functions for Shape Representation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1901.05103/) (2019)
- [Variational Inference with Normalizing Flows](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1505.05770/) (2015)
- [Occupancy Networks: Learning 3D Reconstruction in Function Space](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1812.03828/) (2018)
- [3D U-Net: Learning Dense Volumetric Segmentation from Sparse Annotation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1606.06650/) (2016)
- [RePaint: Inpainting using Denoising Diffusion Probabilistic Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2201.09865/) (2022)
- [DiffWave: A Versatile Diffusion Model for Audio Synthesis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2009.09761/) (2020)
- [Learning Implicit Fields for Generative Shape Modeling](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1812.02822/) (2018)
- [Diffusion Models in Vision: A Survey](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2209.04747/) (2022)
- [Diffusion Probabilistic Models for 3D Point Cloud Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.01458/) (2021)
- [DiffusionCLIP: Text-Guided Diffusion Models for Robust Image Manipulation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2110.02711/) (2021)
- [WaveGrad: Estimating Gradients for Waveform Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2009.00713/) (2020)
- [3D-R2N2: A Unified Approach for Single and Multi-view 3D Object Reconstruction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1604.00449/) (2016)

## Built on by (most cited first, 30 of 128)

- [Fantasia3D: Disentangling Geometry and Appearance for High-quality Text-to-3D Content Creation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.13873/) (2023)
- [One-2-3-45++: Fast Single Image to 3D Objects with Consistent Multi-View Generation and 3D Diffusion](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.07885/) (2023)
- [MeshGPT: Generating Triangle Meshes with Decoder-Only Transformers](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.15475/) (2023)
- [Michelangelo: Conditional 3D Shape Generation based on Shape-Image-Text Aligned Latent Representation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2306.17115/) (2023)
- [XCube: Large-Scale 3D Generative Modeling using Sparse Voxel Hierarchies](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.03806/) (2023)
- [DreamCraft3D: Hierarchical 3D Generation with Bootstrapped Diffusion Prior](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2310.16818/) (2023)
- [Locally Attentional SDF Diffusion for Controllable 3D Shape Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.04461/) (2023)
- [State of the Art on Diffusion Models for Visual Computing](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2310.07204/) (2023)
- [DiT-3D: Exploring Plain Diffusion Transformers for 3D Shape Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2307.01831/) (2023)
- [LN3DIFF++: Scalable Latent Neural Fields Diffusion for Speedy 3D Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.12019/) (2024)
- [Text-Guided Texturing by Synchronized Multi-View Diffusion](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.12891/) (2023)
- [PartCrafter: Structured 3D Mesh Generation via Compositional Latent Diffusion Transformers](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2506.05573/) (2025)
- [Towards Realistic Scene Generation with LiDAR Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.00815/) (2024)
- [EchoScene: Indoor Scene Generation via Information Echo over Scene Graph Diffusion](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2405.00915/) (2024)
- [SALAD: Part-Level Latent Diffusion for 3D Shape Generation and Manipulation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.12236/) (2023)
- [Advances in 3D Generation: A Survey](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2401.17807/) (2024)
- [Generating CAD Code with Vision-Language Models for 3D Designs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.05340/) (2024)
- [Generative AI meets 3D: A Survey on Text-to-3D in AIGC Era](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.06131/) (2023)
- [OmniPart: Part-Aware 3D Generation with Semantic Decoupling and Structural Cohesion](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2507.06165/) (2025)
- [HoloPart: Generative 3D Part Amodal Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2504.07943/) (2025)
- [FlashTex: Fast Relightable Mesh Texturing with LightControlNet](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2402.13251/) (2024)
- [LT3SD: Latent Trees for 3D Scene Diffusion](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2409.08215/) (2024)
- [CommonScenes: Generating Commonsense 3D Indoor Scenes with Scene Graph Diffusion](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.16283/) (2023)
- [Amodal3R: Amodal 3D Reconstruction from Occluded 2D Images](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.13439/) (2025)
- [SceneGen: Single-Image 3D Scene Generation in One Feedforward Pass](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2508.15769/) (2025)
- [SemCity: Semantic Scene Generation with Triplane Diffusion](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.07773/) (2024)
- [CAGE: Controllable Articulation GEneration](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.09570/) (2023)
- [DiffCAD: Weakly-Supervised Probabilistic CAD Model Retrieval and Alignment from an RGB Image](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.18610/) (2023)
- [Mosaic-SDF for 3D Generative Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.09222/) (2023)
- [Posterior Distillation Sampling](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.13831/) (2023)

## Abstract (arXiv)

With the rising industrial attention to 3D virtual modeling technology, generating novel 3D content based on specified conditions (e.g. text) has become a hot issue. In this paper, we propose a new generative 3D modeling framework called Diffusion-SDF for the challenging task of text-to-shape synthesis. Previous approaches lack flexibility in both 3D data representation and shape generation, thereby failing to generate highly diversified 3D shapes conforming to the given text descriptions. To address this, we propose a SDF autoencoder together with the Voxelized Diffusion model to learn and generate representations for voxelized signed distance fields (SDFs) of 3D shapes. Specifically, we design a novel UinU-Net architecture that implants a local-focused inner network inside the standard U-Net architecture, which enables better reconstruction of patch-independent SDF representations. We extend our approach to further text-to-shape tasks including text-conditioned shape completion and manipulation. Experimental results show that Diffusion-SDF generates both higher quality and more diversified 3D shapes that conform well to given text descriptions when compared to previous approaches. Code is available at: https://github.com/ttlmh/Diffusion-SDF