# Control3Diff: Learning Controllable 3D Diffusion Models from Single-view Images

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2304.06700 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2304.06700/

## Key facts

- Cited by 27 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Placed in 3D, point cloud and scene generation, one of 14 directions in Diffusion models.
- Builds on 84 of its 98 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 13 Apr 2023.

## Placed in

- Diffusion models / [3D, point cloud and scene generation](https://mlsanity.com/diffusion/3d-point-cloud-and-scene-generation/)

## Builds on (most cited first, 30 of 84)

- [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)
- [The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Deep Features as a Perceptual Metric](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1801.03924/) (2018)
- [Denoising Diffusion Implicit Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2010.02502/) (2020)
- [Score-Based Generative Modeling through Stochastic Differential Equations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2011.13456/) (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)
- [Scalable Diffusion Models with Transformers](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2212.09748/) (2022)
- [A Style-Based Generator Architecture for Generative Adversarial Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1812.04948/) (2018)
- [Classifier-Free Diffusion Guidance](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2207.12598/) (2022)
- [Adding Conditional Control to Text-to-Image Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2302.05543/) (2023)
- [Image-to-Image Translation with Conditional Adversarial Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1611.07004/) (2016)
- [LAION-5B: An open large-scale dataset for training next generation image-text models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2210.08402/) (2022)
- [Generative Modeling by Estimating Gradients of the Data Distribution](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1907.05600/) (2019)
- [Analyzing and Improving the Image Quality of StyleGAN](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1912.04958/) (2019)
- [DreamFusion: Text-to-3D using 2D Diffusion](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2209.14988/) (2022)
- [Progressive Growing of GANs for Improved Quality, Stability, and Variation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1710.10196/) (2017)
- [Video Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2204.03458/) (2022)
- [Imagen Video: High Definition Video Generation with Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2210.02303/) (2022)
- [pixelNeRF: Neural Radiance Fields from One or Few Images](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2012.02190/) (2020)
- [Image Super-Resolution via Iterative Refinement](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2104.07636/) (2021)
- [RePaint: Inpainting using Denoising Diffusion Probabilistic Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2201.09865/) (2022)
- [Diffusion Posterior Sampling for General Noisy Inverse Problems](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2209.14687/) (2022)
- [Palette: Image-to-Image Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2111.05826/) (2021)
- [Semantic Image Synthesis with Spatially-Adaptive Normalization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1903.07291/) (2019)
- [TensoRF: Tensorial Radiance Fields](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2203.09517/) (2022)

## Built on by (most cited first, 27 of 27)

- [Wonder3D: Single Image to 3D using Cross-Domain Diffusion](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2310.15008/) (2023)
- [SyncDreamer: Generating Multiview-consistent Images from a Single-view Image](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2309.03453/) (2023)
- [Diffusion with Forward Models: Solving Stochastic Inverse Problems Without Direct Supervision](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2306.11719/) (2023)
- [TFG: Unified Training-Free Guidance for Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2409.15761/) (2024)
- [EpiDiff: Enhancing Multi-View Synthesis via Localized Epipolar-Constrained Diffusion](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.06725/) (2023)
- [World-consistent Video Diffusion with Explicit 3D Modeling](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2412.01821/) (2024)
- [RenAIssance: A Survey into AI Text-to-Image Generation in the Era of Large Model](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2309.00810/) (2023)
- [DiffusionAvatars: Deferred Diffusion for High-fidelity 3D Head Avatars](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.18635/) (2023)
- [ElasticDiffusion: Training-free Arbitrary Size Image Generation through Global-Local Content Separation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.18822/) (2023)
- [Gaussian3Diff: 3D Gaussian Diffusion for 3D Full Head Synthesis and Editing](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.03763/) (2023)
- [Novel View Synthesis with Pixel-Space Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2411.07765/) (2024)
- [Denoising Diffusion via Image-Based Rendering](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2402.03445/) (2024)
- [Doodle Your 3D: From Abstract Freehand Sketches to Precise 3D Shapes](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.04043/) (2023)
- [ViewFusion: Towards Multi-View Consistency via Interpolated Denoising](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2402.18842/) (2024)
- [Chasing Consistency in Text-to-3D Generation from a Single Image](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2309.03599/) (2023)
- [Envision3D: One Image to 3D with Anchor Views Interpolation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.08902/) (2024)
- [Wonder3D++: Cross-domain Diffusion for High-fidelity 3D Generation from a Single Image](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2511.01767/) (2025)
- [Direct and Explicit 3D Generation from a Single Image](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2411.10947/) (2024)
- [PercHead: Perceptual Head Model for Single-Image 3D Head Reconstruction & Editing](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2511.02777/) (2025)
- [G3DR: Generative 3D Reconstruction in ImageNet](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.00939/) (2024)
- [Revealing Directions for Text-guided 3D Face Editing](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.04965/) (2024)
- [Enhancing Single Image to 3D Generation using Gaussian Splatting and Hybrid Diffusion Priors](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.09467/) (2024)
- [GANFusion: Feed-Forward Text-to-3D with Diffusion in GAN Space](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2412.16717/) (2024)
- [Survey on Controlable Image Synthesis with Deep Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2307.10275/) (2023)
- [Multimodal Conditional 3D Face Geometry Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.01074/) (2024)
- [Pomo3D: 3D-Aware Portrait Accessorizing and More](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2409.14430/) (2024)
- [LoomNet: Enhancing Multi-View Image Generation via Latent Space Weaving](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2507.05499/) (2025)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Diffusion models have recently become the de-facto approach for generative modeling in the 2D domain. However, extending diffusion models to 3D is challenging due to the difficulties in acquiring 3D ground truth data for training. On the other hand, 3D GANs that integrate implicit 3D representations into GANs have shown remarkable 3D-aware generation when trained only on single-view image datasets. However, 3D GANs do not provide straightforward ways to precisely control image synthesis. To address these challenges, We present Control3Diff, a 3D diffusion model that combines the strengths of diffusion models and 3D GANs for versatile, controllable 3D-aware image synthesis for single-view datasets. Control3Diff explicitly models the underlying latent distribution (optionally conditioned on external inputs), thus enabling direct control during the diffusion process. Moreover, our approach is general and applicable to any type of controlling input, allowing us to train it with the same diffusion objective without any auxiliary supervision. We validate the efficacy of Control3Diff on standard image generation benchmarks, including FFHQ, AFHQ, and ShapeNet, using various conditioning inputs such as images, sketches, and text prompts. Please see the project website (urlhttps://jiataogu.me/control3diff) for video comparisons.