# Differentiable Shadow Mapping for Efficient Inverse Graphics

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2308.10896 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2308.10896/

## Key facts

- Cited by 4 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 40 of its 100 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 21 Aug 2023.

## Builds on (most cited first, 30 of 40)

- [Adam: A Method for Stochastic Optimization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1412.6980/) (2014)
- [PyTorch: An Imperative Style, High-Performance Deep Learning Library](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1912.01703/) (2019)
- [Mip-NeRF 360: Unbounded Anti-Aliased Neural Radiance Fields](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2111.12077/) (2021)
- [Mip-NeRF: A Multiscale Representation for Anti-Aliasing Neural Radiance Fields](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.13415/) (2021)
- [NeuS: Learning Neural Implicit Surfaces by Volume Rendering for Multi-view Reconstruction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2106.10689/) (2021)
- [Volume Rendering of Neural Implicit Surfaces](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2106.12052/) (2021)
- [Differentiable Volumetric Rendering: Learning Implicit 3D Representations without 3D Supervision](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1912.07372/) (2019)
- [UNISURF: Unifying Neural Implicit Surfaces and Radiance Fields for Multi-View Reconstruction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2104.10078/) (2021)
- [RegNeRF: Regularizing Neural Radiance Fields for View Synthesis from Sparse Inputs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2112.00724/) (2021)
- [Modular Primitives for High-Performance Differentiable Rendering](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2011.03277/) (2020)
- [Neural 3D Mesh Renderer](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1711.07566/) (2017)
- [Soft Rasterizer: A Differentiable Renderer for Image-based 3D Reasoning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1904.01786/) (2019)
- [Extracting Triangular 3D Models, Materials, and Lighting From Images](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2111.12503/) (2021)
- [PhySG: Inverse Rendering with Spherical Gaussians for Physics-based Material Editing and Relighting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2104.00674/) (2021)
- [Text2Mesh: Text-Driven Neural Stylization for Meshes](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2112.03221/) (2021)
- [3D Morphable Face Models -- Past, Present and Future](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1909.01815/) (2019)
- [ARCH: Animatable Reconstruction of Clothed Humans](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2004.04572/) (2020)
- [Learning to Predict 3D Objects with an Interpolation-based Differentiable Renderer](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1908.01210/) (2019)
- [Unsupervised Learning of Probably Symmetric Deformable 3D Objects from Images in the Wild](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1911.11130/) (2019)
- [Shape, Light, and Material Decomposition from Images using Monte Carlo Rendering and Denoising](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2206.03380/) (2022)
- [NeRFactor: Neural Factorization of Shape and Reflectance Under an Unknown Illumination](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2106.01970/) (2021)
- [Real-time Deep Dynamic Characters](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2105.01794/) (2021)
- [IRON: Inverse Rendering by Optimizing Neural SDFs and Materials from Photometric Images](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2204.02232/) (2022)
- [Neural Actor: Neural Free-view Synthesis of Human Actors with Pose Control](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2106.02019/) (2021)
- [Image GANs meet Differentiable Rendering for Inverse Graphics and Interpretable 3D Neural Rendering](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2010.09125/) (2020)
- [Learning Formation of Physically-Based Face Attributes](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2004.03458/) (2020)
- [Self6D: Self-Supervised Monocular 6D Object Pose Estimation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2004.06468/) (2020)
- [Unified Shape and SVBRDF Recovery using Differentiable Monte Carlo Rendering](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.15208/) (2021)
- [Convolutional Generation of Textured 3D Meshes](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2006.07660/) (2020)
- [DIB-R++: Learning to Predict Lighting and Material with a Hybrid Differentiable Renderer](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2111.00140/) (2021)

## Built on by (most cited first, 4 of 4)

- [The Sky's the Limit: Re-lightable Outdoor Scenes via a Sky-pixel Constrained Illumination Prior and Outside-In Visibility](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.16937/) (2023)
- [All-frequency Full-body Human Image Relighting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2411.00356/) (2024)
- [SRUG: Shadow-Guided Relightable Urban Scene with Generation Model](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2605.24700/) (2026)
- [SceneHI: High-Resolution 3D-Consistent Scene Texturing with Controllable Illumination](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2609.10363/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

We show how shadows can be efficiently generated in differentiable rendering of triangle meshes. Our central observation is that pre-filtered shadow mapping, a technique for approximating shadows based on rendering from the perspective of a light, can be combined with existing differentiable rasterizers to yield differentiable visibility information. We demonstrate at several inverse graphics problems that differentiable shadow maps are orders of magnitude faster than differentiable light transport simulation with similar accuracy -- while differentiable rasterization without shadows often fails to converge.