# SPARF: Large-Scale Learning of 3D Sparse Radiance Fields from Few Input Images

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2212.09100 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2212.09100/

## Key facts

- Cited by 17 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 61 of its 88 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 18 Dec 2022.

## Builds on (most cited first, 30 of 61)

- [An Image is Worth 16x16 Words: Transformers for Image Recognition at Scale](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2010.11929/) (2020)
- [The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Deep Features as a Perceptual Metric](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1801.03924/) (2018)
- [Instant Neural Graphics Primitives with a Multiresolution Hash Encoding](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2201.05989/) (2022)
- [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)
- [Occupancy Networks: Learning 3D Reconstruction in Function Space](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1812.03828/) (2018)
- [Plenoxels: Radiance Fields without Neural Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2112.05131/) (2021)
- [pixelNeRF: Neural Radiance Fields from One or Few Images](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2012.02190/) (2020)
- [Objaverse: A Universe of Annotated 3D Objects](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2212.08051/) (2022)
- [D-NeRF: Neural Radiance Fields for Dynamic Scenes](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2011.13961/) (2020)
- [Magic3D: High-Resolution Text-to-3D Content Creation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2211.10440/) (2022)
- [NeRF in the Wild: Neural Radiance Fields for Unconstrained Photo Collections](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2008.02268/) (2020)
- [4D Spatio-Temporal ConvNets: Minkowski Convolutional Neural Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1904.08755/) (2019)
- [Efficient Geometry-aware 3D Generative Adversarial Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2112.07945/) (2021)
- [Volume Rendering of Neural Implicit Surfaces](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2106.12052/) (2021)
- [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)
- [GIRAFFE: Representing Scenes as Compositional Generative Neural Feature Fields](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2011.12100/) (2020)
- [Accelerating 3D Deep Learning with PyTorch3D](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2007.08501/) (2020)
- [MVSNeRF: Fast Generalizable Radiance Field Reconstruction from Multi-View Stereo](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.15595/) (2021)
- [pi-GAN: Periodic Implicit Generative Adversarial Networks for 3D-Aware Image Synthesis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2012.00926/) (2020)
- [IBRNet: Learning Multi-View Image-Based Rendering](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2102.13090/) (2021)
- [Differentiable Volumetric Rendering: Learning Implicit 3D Representations without 3D Supervision](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1912.07372/) (2019)
- [Local Light Field Fusion: Practical View Synthesis with Prescriptive Sampling Guidelines](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1905.00889/) (2019)
- [Common Objects in 3D: Large-Scale Learning and Evaluation of Real-life 3D Category Reconstruction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2109.00512/) (2021)
- [Pixel2Mesh: Generating 3D Mesh Models from Single RGB Images](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1804.01654/) (2018)
- [SAPIEN: A SimulAted Part-based Interactive ENvironment](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2003.08515/) (2020)
- [BlendedMVS: A Large-scale Dataset for Generalized Multi-view Stereo Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1911.10127/) (2019)
- [GET3D: A Generative Model of High Quality 3D Textured Shapes Learned from Images](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2209.11163/) (2022)
- [Neural 3D Mesh Renderer](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1711.07566/) (2017)

## Built on by (most cited first, 17 of 17)

- [Magic123: One Image to High-Quality 3D Object Generation Using Both 2D and 3D Diffusion Priors](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2306.17843/) (2023)
- [GES: Generalized Exponential Splatting for Efficient Radiance Field Rendering](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2402.10128/) (2024)
- [3D Convex Splatting: Radiance Field Rendering with 3D Smooth Convexes](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2411.14974/) (2024)
- [ViP-NeRF: Visibility Prior for Sparse Input Neural Radiance Fields](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.00041/) (2023)
- [Cascade-Zero123: One Image to Highly Consistent 3D with Self-Prompted Nearby Views](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.04424/) (2023)
- [TrackNeRF: Bundle Adjusting NeRF from Sparse and Noisy Views via Feature Tracks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2408.10739/) (2024)
- [LiftImage3D: Lifting Any Single Image to 3D Gaussians with Video Generation Priors](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2412.09597/) (2024)
- [GST: Precise 3D Human Body from a Single Image with Gaussian Splatting Transformers](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2409.04196/) (2024)
- [Ego3DT: Tracking Every 3D Object in Ego-centric Videos](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.08530/) (2024)
- [X-Diffusion: Generating Detailed 3D MRI Volumes From a Single Image Using Cross-Sectional Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.19604/) (2024)
- [UKBOB: One Billion MRI Labeled Masks for Generalizable 3D Medical Image Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2504.06908/) (2025)
- [Sparse-View 3D Reconstruction: Recent Advances and Open Challenges](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2507.16406/) (2025)
- [MetaDreamer: Efficient Text-to-3D Creation With Disentangling Geometry and Texture](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.10123/) (2023)
- [CAD-NeRF: Learning NeRFs from Uncalibrated Few-view Images by CAD Model Retrieval](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2411.02979/) (2024)
- [Boosting Cross-Domain Point Classification via Distilling Relational Priors from 2D Transformers](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.18534/) (2024)
- [Quantile Rendering: Efficiently Embedding High-dimensional Feature on 3D Gaussian Splatting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2512.20927/) (2025)
- [ReconSplat: Generalizable 3D Scene Reconstruction Beyond Observed Views](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2608.28895/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Recent advances in Neural Radiance Fields (NeRFs) treat the problem of novel view synthesis as Sparse Radiance Field (SRF) optimization using sparse voxels for efficient and fast rendering (plenoxels,InstantNGP). In order to leverage machine learning and adoption of SRFs as a 3D representation, we present SPARF, a large-scale ShapeNet-based synthetic dataset for novel view synthesis consisting of ~ 17 million images rendered from nearly 40,000 shapes at high resolution (400 X 400 pixels). The dataset is orders of magnitude larger than existing synthetic datasets for novel view synthesis and includes more than one million 3D-optimized radiance fields with multiple voxel resolutions. Furthermore, we propose a novel pipeline (SuRFNet) that learns to generate sparse voxel radiance fields from only few views. This is done by using the densely collected SPARF dataset and 3D sparse convolutions. SuRFNet employs partial SRFs from few/one images and a specialized SRF loss to learn to generate high-quality sparse voxel radiance fields that can be rendered from novel views. Our approach achieves state-of-the-art results in the task of unconstrained novel view synthesis based on few views on ShapeNet as compared to recent baselines. The SPARF dataset is made public with the code and models on the project website https://abdullahamdi.com/sparf/ .