# DreamSparse: Escaping from Plato's Cave with 2D Frozen Diffusion Model Given Sparse Views

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2306.03414 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2306.03414/

## Key facts

- Cited by 31 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 67 of its 77 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 6 Jun 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 67)

- [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)
- [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)
- [Photorealistic Text-to-Image Diffusion Models with Deep Language Understanding](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2205.11487/) (2022)
- [Adding Conditional Control to Text-to-Image Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2302.05543/) (2023)
- [LAION-5B: An open large-scale dataset for training next generation image-text models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2210.08402/) (2022)
- [Instant Neural Graphics Primitives with a Multiresolution Hash Encoding](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2201.05989/) (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)
- [Survey of Hallucination in Natural Language Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2202.03629/) (2022)
- [SDEdit: Guided Image Synthesis and Editing with Stochastic Differential Equations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2108.01073/) (2021)
- [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)
- [Zero-1-to-3: Zero-shot One Image to 3D Object](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.11328/) (2023)
- [Palette: Image-to-Image Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2111.05826/) (2021)
- [Plug-and-Play Diffusion Features for Text-Driven Image-to-Image Translation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2211.12572/) (2022)
- [Scene Representation Networks: Continuous 3D-Structure-Aware Neural Scene Representations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1906.01618/) (2019)
- [MVSNeRF: Fast Generalizable Radiance Field Reconstruction from Multi-View Stereo](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.15595/) (2021)
- [Diffusion Probabilistic Models for 3D Point Cloud Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.01458/) (2021)
- [IBRNet: Learning Multi-View Image-Based Rendering](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2102.13090/) (2021)
- [Common Objects in 3D: Large-Scale Learning and Evaluation of Real-life 3D Category Reconstruction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2109.00512/) (2021)
- [RegNeRF: Regularizing Neural Radiance Fields for View Synthesis from Sparse Inputs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2112.00724/) (2021)
- [LION: Latent Point Diffusion Models for 3D Shape Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2210.06978/) (2022)
- [3D Shape Generation and Completion through Point-Voxel Diffusion](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2104.03670/) (2021)
- [Latent-NeRF for Shape-Guided Generation of 3D Shapes and Textures](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2211.07600/) (2022)
- [Label-Efficient Semantic Segmentation with Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2112.03126/) (2021)
- [Putting NeRF on a Diet: Semantically Consistent Few-Shot View Synthesis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2104.00677/) (2021)

## Built on by (most cited first, 30 of 31)

- [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)
- [ReconFusion: 3D Reconstruction with Diffusion Priors](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.02981/) (2023)
- [4D-fy: Text-to-4D Generation Using Hybrid Score Distillation Sampling](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.17984/) (2023)
- [VD3D: Taming Large Video Diffusion Transformers for 3D Camera Control](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.12781/) (2024)
- [AC3D: Analyzing and Improving 3D Camera Control in Video Diffusion Transformers](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2411.18673/) (2024)
- [TC4D: Trajectory-Conditioned Text-to-4D Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.17920/) (2024)
- [Advances in 3D Generation: A Survey](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2401.17807/) (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)
- [CharacterGen: Efficient 3D Character Generation from Single Images with Multi-View Pose Canonicalization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2402.17214/) (2024)
- [Sparse3D: Distilling Multiview-Consistent Diffusion for Object Reconstruction from Sparse Views](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2308.14078/) (2023)
- [Learning Continuous 3D Words for Text-to-Image Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2402.08654/) (2024)
- [Denoising Diffusion via Image-Based Rendering](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2402.03445/) (2024)
- [ViewFusion: Towards Multi-View Consistency via Interpolated Denoising](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2402.18842/) (2024)
- [Inpaint3D: 3D Scene Content Generation using 2D Inpainting Diffusion](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.03869/) (2023)
- [Envision3D: One Image to 3D with Anchor Views Interpolation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.08902/) (2024)
- [Zero-Shot Novel View and Depth Synthesis with Multi-View Geometric Diffusion](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2501.18804/) (2025)
- [Sampling 3D Gaussian Scenes in Seconds with Latent Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.13099/) (2024)
- [Sparse-view Pose Estimation and Reconstruction via Analysis by Generative Synthesis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2412.03570/) (2024)
- [Wonder3D++: Cross-domain Diffusion for High-fidelity 3D Generation from a Single Image](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2511.01767/) (2025)
- [Viewpoint Textual Inversion: Discovering Scene Representations and 3D View Control in 2D Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2309.07986/) (2023)
- [Direct and Explicit 3D Generation from a Single Image](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2411.10947/) (2024)
- [AnchoredDream: Zero-Shot 360deg Indoor Scene Generation from a Single View via Geometric Grounding](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2601.16532/) (2026)
- [CamViG: Camera Aware Image-to-Video Generation with Multimodal Transformers](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2405.13195/) (2024)
- [DMS:Diffusion-Based Multi-Baseline Stereo Generation for Improving Self-Supervised Depth Estimation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2508.13091/) (2025)
- [PaintScene4D: Consistent 4D Scene Generation from Text Prompts](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2412.04471/) (2024)
- [View Transformation Robustness for Multi-View 3D Object Reconstruction with Reconstruction Error-Guided View Selection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2412.11428/) (2024)
- [DreamTexture: Shape from Virtual Texture with Analysis by Augmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.16412/) (2025)
- [Optimized View and Geometry Distillation from Multi-view Diffuser](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.06198/) (2023)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Synthesizing novel view images from a few views is a challenging but practical problem. Existing methods often struggle with producing high-quality results or necessitate per-object optimization in such few-view settings due to the insufficient information provided. In this work, we explore leveraging the strong 2D priors in pre-trained diffusion models for synthesizing novel view images. 2D diffusion models, nevertheless, lack 3D awareness, leading to distorted image synthesis and compromising the identity. To address these problems, we propose DreamSparse, a framework that enables the frozen pre-trained diffusion model to generate geometry and identity-consistent novel view image. Specifically, DreamSparse incorporates a geometry module designed to capture 3D features from sparse views as a 3D prior. Subsequently, a spatial guidance model is introduced to convert these 3D feature maps into spatial information for the generative process. This information is then used to guide the pre-trained diffusion model, enabling it to generate geometrically consistent images without tuning it. Leveraging the strong image priors in the pre-trained diffusion models, DreamSparse is capable of synthesizing high-quality novel views for both object and scene-level images and generalising to open-set images. Experimental results demonstrate that our framework can effectively synthesize novel view images from sparse views and outperforms baselines in both trained and open-set category images. More results can be found on our project page: https://sites.google.com/view/dreamsparse-webpage.