# TextDeformer: Geometry Manipulation using Text Guidance

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2304.13348 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2304.13348/

## Key facts

- Cited by 94 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 35 of its 54 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 26 Apr 2023.

## Builds on (most cited first, 30 of 35)

- [Learning Transferable Visual Models From Natural Language Supervision](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.00020/) (2021)
- [High-Resolution Image Synthesis with Latent Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2112.10752/) (2021)
- [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)
- [LAION-5B: An open large-scale dataset for training next generation image-text models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2210.08402/) (2022)
- [GLIDE: Towards Photorealistic Image Generation and Editing with Text-Guided Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2112.10741/) (2021)
- [DreamFusion: Text-to-3D using 2D Diffusion](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2209.14988/) (2022)
- [Objaverse: A Universe of Annotated 3D Objects](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2212.08051/) (2022)
- [Magic3D: High-Resolution Text-to-3D Content Creation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2211.10440/) (2022)
- [StyleCLIP: Text-Driven Manipulation of StyleGAN Imagery](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.17249/) (2021)
- [Point-E: A System for Generating 3D Point Clouds from Complex Prompts](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2212.08751/) (2022)
- [DiffusionCLIP: Text-Guided Diffusion Models for Robust Image Manipulation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2110.02711/) (2021)
- [Score Jacobian Chaining: Lifting Pretrained 2D Diffusion Models for 3D Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2212.00774/) (2022)
- [Zero-Shot Text-Guided Object Generation with Dream Fields](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2112.01455/) (2021)
- [Modular Primitives for High-Performance Differentiable Rendering](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2011.03277/) (2020)
- [Text2Mesh: Text-Driven Neural Stylization for Meshes](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2112.03221/) (2021)
- [Deep ViT Features as Dense Visual Descriptors](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2112.05814/) (2021)
- [Learning Category-Specific Mesh Reconstruction from Image Collections](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1803.07549/) (2018)
- [CLIP-Mesh: Generating textured meshes from text using pretrained image-text models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2203.13333/) (2022)
- [CLIP-Forge: Towards Zero-Shot Text-to-Shape Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2110.02624/) (2021)
- [Text2Shape: Generating Shapes from Natural Language by Learning Joint Embeddings](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1803.08495/) (2018)
- [Neural Cages for Detail-Preserving 3D Deformations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1912.06395/) (2019)
- [Variational Autoencoders for Deforming 3D Mesh Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1709.04307/) (2017)
- [3DStyleNet: Creating 3D Shapes with Geometric and Texture Style Variations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2108.12958/) (2021)
- [Learning Skeletal Articulations with Neural Blend Shapes](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2105.02451/) (2021)
- [KeypointDeformer: Unsupervised 3D Keypoint Discovery for Shape Control](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2104.11224/) (2021)
- [ARAPReg: An As-Rigid-As Possible Regularization Loss for Learning Deformable Shape Generators](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2108.09432/) (2021)
- [Predicting Animation Skeletons for 3D Articulated Models via Volumetric Nets](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1908.08506/) (2019)
- [DeepMetaHandles: Learning Deformation Meta-Handles of 3D Meshes with Biharmonic Coordinates](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2102.09105/) (2021)
- [RigNet: Neural Rigging for Articulated Characters](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2005.00559/) (2020)

## Built on by (most cited first, 30 of 94)

- [Magic123: One Image to High-Quality 3D Object Generation Using Both 2D and 3D Diffusion Priors](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2306.17843/) (2023)
- [GaussianEditor: Swift and Controllable 3D Editing with Gaussian Splatting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.14521/) (2023)
- [4D-fy: Text-to-4D Generation Using Hybrid Score Distillation Sampling](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.17984/) (2023)
- [GaussianEditor: Editing 3D Gaussians Delicately with Text Instructions](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.16037/) (2023)
- [VD3D: Taming Large Video Diffusion Transformers for 3D Camera Control](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.12781/) (2024)
- [DreamEditor: Text-Driven 3D Scene Editing with Neural Fields](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2306.13455/) (2023)
- [AC3D: Analyzing and Improving 3D Camera Control in Video Diffusion Transformers](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2411.18673/) (2024)
- [TADA! Text to Animatable Digital Avatars](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2308.10899/) (2023)
- [DGE: Direct Gaussian 3D Editing by Consistent Multi-view Editing](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.18929/) (2024)
- [HumanGaussian: Text-Driven 3D Human Generation with Gaussian Splatting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.17061/) (2023)
- [TC4D: Trajectory-Conditioned Text-to-4D Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.17920/) (2024)
- [Generative AI meets 3D: A Survey on Text-to-3D in AIGC Era](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.06131/) (2023)
- [Instant3dit: Multiview Inpainting for Fast Editing of 3D Objects](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2412.00518/) (2024)
- [Lyra 2.0: Explorable Generative 3D Worlds](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2604.13036/) (2026)
- [Lyra: Generative 3D Scene Reconstruction via Video Diffusion Model Self-Distillation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2509.19296/) (2025)
- [3D Paintbrush: Local Stylization of 3D Shapes with Cascaded Score Distillation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.09571/) (2023)
- [Mesh-based Gaussian Splatting for Real-time Large-scale Deformation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2402.04796/) (2024)
- [Garment3DGen: 3D Garment Stylization and Texture Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.18816/) (2024)
- [As-Plausible-As-Possible: Plausibility-Aware Mesh Deformation Using 2D Diffusion Priors](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.16739/) (2023)
- [GALA: Generating Animatable Layered Assets from a Single Scan](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2401.12979/) (2024)
- [GauU-Scene V2: Assessing the Reliability of Image-Based Metrics with Expansive Lidar Image Dataset Using 3DGS and NeRF](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.04880/) (2024)
- [GarmentDreamer: 3DGS Guided Garment Synthesis with Diverse Geometry and Texture Details](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2405.12420/) (2024)
- [3D Mesh Editing using Masked LRMs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2412.08641/) (2024)
- [Back to 3D: Few-Shot 3D Keypoint Detection with Back-Projected 2D Features](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.18113/) (2023)
- [MeshUp: Multi-Target Mesh Deformation via Blended Score Distillation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2408.14899/) (2024)
- [Simulating the Real World: A Unified Survey of Multimodal Generative Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.04641/) (2025)
- [InstructP2P: Learning to Edit 3D Point Clouds with Text Instructions](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2306.07154/) (2023)
- [MatAtlas: Text-driven Consistent Geometry Texturing and Material Assignment](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.02899/) (2024)
- [A Survey On Text-to-3D Contents Generation In The Wild](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2405.09431/) (2024)
- [Geometry in Style: 3D Stylization via Surface Normal Deformation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.23241/) (2025)

## Abstract (arXiv)

We present a technique for automatically producing a deformation of an input triangle mesh, guided solely by a text prompt. Our framework is capable of deformations that produce both large, low-frequency shape changes, and small high-frequency details. Our framework relies on differentiable rendering to connect geometry to powerful pre-trained image encoders, such as CLIP and DINO. Notably, updating mesh geometry by taking gradient steps through differentiable rendering is notoriously challenging, commonly resulting in deformed meshes with significant artifacts. These difficulties are amplified by noisy and inconsistent gradients from CLIP. To overcome this limitation, we opt to represent our mesh deformation through Jacobians, which updates deformations in a global, smooth manner (rather than locally-sub-optimal steps). Our key observation is that Jacobians are a representation that favors smoother, large deformations, leading to a global relation between vertices and pixels, and avoiding localized noisy gradients. Additionally, to ensure the resulting shape is coherent from all 3D viewpoints, we encourage the deep features computed on the 2D encoding of the rendering to be consistent for a given vertex from all viewpoints. We demonstrate that our method is capable of smoothly-deforming a wide variety of source mesh and target text prompts, achieving both large modifications to, e.g., body proportions of animals, as well as adding fine semantic details, such as shoe laces on an army boot and fine details of a face.