# Sin3DM: Learning a Diffusion Model from a Single 3D Textured Shape

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2305.15399 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.15399/

## Key facts

- Cited by 29 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 63 of its 118 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 24 May 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 63)

- [Denoising Diffusion Probabilistic Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2006.11239/) (2020)
- [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)
- [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)
- [LAION-5B: An open large-scale dataset for training next generation image-text models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2210.08402/) (2022)
- [DreamBooth: Fine Tuning Text-to-Image Diffusion Models for Subject-Driven Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2208.12242/) (2022)
- [DreamFusion: Text-to-3D using 2D Diffusion](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2209.14988/) (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)
- [Objaverse: A Universe of Annotated 3D Objects](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2212.08051/) (2022)
- [Zero-1-to-3: Zero-shot One Image to 3D Object](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.11328/) (2023)
- [Magic3D: High-Resolution Text-to-3D Content Creation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2211.10440/) (2022)
- [Efficient Geometry-aware 3D Generative Adversarial Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2112.07945/) (2021)
- [Learning Implicit Fields for Generative Shape Modeling](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1812.02822/) (2018)
- [Convolutional Occupancy Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2003.04618/) (2020)
- [Point-E: A System for Generating 3D Point Clouds from Complex Prompts](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2212.08751/) (2022)
- [Score Jacobian Chaining: Lifting Pretrained 2D Diffusion Models for 3D Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2212.00774/) (2022)
- [Learning a Probabilistic Latent Space of Object Shapes via 3D Generative-Adversarial Modeling](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1610.07584/) (2016)
- [LION: Latent Point Diffusion Models for 3D Shape Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2210.06978/) (2022)
- [Latent-NeRF for Shape-Guided Generation of 3D Shapes and Textures](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2211.07600/) (2022)
- [PointFlow: 3D Point Cloud Generation with Continuous Normalizing Flows](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1906.12320/) (2019)
- [GET3D: A Generative Model of High Quality 3D Textured Shapes Learned from Images](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2209.11163/) (2022)
- [Modular Primitives for High-Performance Differentiable Rendering](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2011.03277/) (2020)
- [Shap-E: Generating Conditional 3D Implicit Functions](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.02463/) (2023)

## Built on by (most cited first, 29 of 29)

- [Improving Tuning-Free Real Image Editing with Proximal Guidance](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2306.05414/) (2023)
- [pix2gestalt: Amodal Segmentation by Synthesizing Wholes](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2401.14398/) (2024)
- [SemCity: Semantic Scene Generation with Triplane Diffusion](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.07773/) (2024)
- [Controlling the World by Sleight of Hand](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2408.07147/) (2024)
- [ThemeStation: Generating Theme-Aware 3D Assets from Few Exemplars](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.15383/) (2024)
- [Single Mesh Diffusion Models with Field Latents for Texture Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.09250/) (2023)
- [TexRO: Generating Delicate Textures of 3D Models by Recursive Optimization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.15009/) (2024)
- [Surf-D: Generating High-Quality Surfaces of Arbitrary Topologies Using Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.17050/) (2023)
- [CodecNeRF: Toward Fast Encoding and Decoding, Compact, and High-quality Novel-view Synthesis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.04913/) (2024)
- [PEGAsus: 3D Personalization of Geometry and Appearance](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2602.08198/) (2026)
- [Blaze3DM: Marry Triplane Representation with Diffusion for 3D Medical Inverse Problem Solving](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2405.15241/) (2024)
- [EraseDraw: Learning to Draw Step-by-Step via Erasing Objects from Images](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2409.00522/) (2024)
- [Retargeting Visual Data with Deformation Fields](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.13297/) (2023)
- [UV-free Texture Generation with Denoising and Geodesic Heat Diffusions](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2408.16762/) (2024)
- [ShapeShifter: 3D Variations Using Multiscale and Sparse Point-Voxel Diffusion](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2502.02187/) (2025)
- [TriTex: Learning Texture from a Single Mesh via Triplane Semantic Features](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.16630/) (2025)
- [Category-Aware 3D Object Composition with Disentangled Texture and Shape Multi-view Diffusion](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2509.02357/) (2025)
- [RefAny3D: 3D Asset-Referenced Diffusion Models for Image Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2601.22094/) (2026)
- [GOEmbed: Gradient Origin Embeddings for Representation Agnostic 3D Feature Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.08744/) (2023)
- [Towards Practical Single-shot Motion Synthesis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.01136/) (2024)
- [DreamTexture: Shape from Virtual Texture with Analysis by Augmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.16412/) (2025)
- [Controllable Single-shot Animation Blending with Temporal Conditioning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2508.18525/) (2025)
- [StructDiff: A Structure-Preserving and Spatially Controllable Diffusion Model for Single-Image Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2604.12575/) (2026)
- [Factorized Video Autoencoders for Efficient Generative Modelling](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2412.04452/) (2024)
- [ExCellGen: Fast, Controllable, Photorealistic 3D Scene Generation from a Single Real-World Exemplar](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2412.16253/) (2024)
- [3D Shape Generation: A Survey](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2506.22678/) (2025)
- [ReSWD: ReSTIR'd, not shaken. Combining Reservoir Sampling and Sliced Wasserstein Distance for Variance Reduction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2510.01061/) (2025)
- [FurnSet: Exploiting Repeats for 3D Scene Reconstruction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2604.20093/) (2026)
- [Rethinking 3D Shape Generation: Diffusion over Superquadrics](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2606.08957/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Synthesizing novel 3D models that resemble the input example has long been pursued by graphics artists and machine learning researchers. In this paper, we present Sin3DM, a diffusion model that learns the internal patch distribution from a single 3D textured shape and generates high-quality variations with fine geometry and texture details. Training a diffusion model directly in 3D would induce large memory and computational cost. Therefore, we first compress the input into a lower-dimensional latent space and then train a diffusion model on it. Specifically, we encode the input 3D textured shape into triplane feature maps that represent the signed distance and texture fields of the input. The denoising network of our diffusion model has a limited receptive field to avoid overfitting, and uses triplane-aware 2D convolution blocks to improve the result quality. Aside from randomly generating new samples, our model also facilitates applications such as retargeting, outpainting and local editing. Through extensive qualitative and quantitative evaluation, we show that our method outperforms prior methods in generation quality of 3D shapes.