# Efficient Ray Sampling for Radiance Fields Reconstruction

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2308.15547 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2308.15547/

## Key facts

- Cited by 8 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 42 of its 51 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 29 Aug 2023.

## Builds on (most cited first, 30 of 42)

- [Adam: A Method for Stochastic Optimization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1412.6980/) (2014)
- [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)
- [Plenoxels: Radiance Fields without Neural Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2112.05131/) (2021)
- [pixelNeRF: Neural Radiance Fields from One or Few Images](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2012.02190/) (2020)
- [D-NeRF: Neural Radiance Fields for Dynamic Scenes](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2011.13961/) (2020)
- [Magic3D: High-Resolution Text-to-3D Content Creation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2211.10440/) (2022)
- [TensoRF: Tensorial Radiance Fields](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2203.09517/) (2022)
- [Diffusion Models: A Comprehensive Survey of Methods and Applications](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2209.00796/) (2022)
- [Direct Voxel Grid Optimization: Super-fast Convergence for Radiance Fields Reconstruction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2111.11215/) (2021)
- [PlenOctrees for Real-time Rendering of Neural Radiance Fields](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.14024/) (2021)
- [GIRAFFE: Representing Scenes as Compositional Generative Neural Feature Fields](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2011.12100/) (2020)
- [Neural Scene Flow Fields for Space-Time View Synthesis of Dynamic Scenes](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2011.13084/) (2020)
- [MVSNeRF: Fast Generalizable Radiance Field Reconstruction from Multi-View Stereo](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.15595/) (2021)
- [Depth-supervised NeRF: Fewer Views and Faster Training for Free](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2107.02791/) (2021)
- [Block-NeRF: Scalable Large Scene Neural View Synthesis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2202.05263/) (2022)
- [IBRNet: Learning Multi-View Image-Based Rendering](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2102.13090/) (2021)
- [KiloNeRF: Speeding up Neural Radiance Fields with Thousands of Tiny MLPs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.13744/) (2021)
- [Neural Body: Implicit Neural Representations with Structured Latent Codes for Novel View Synthesis of Dynamic Humans](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2012.15838/) (2020)
- [NICE-SLAM: Neural Implicit Scalable Encoding for SLAM](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2112.12130/) (2021)
- [Ref-NeRF: Structured View-Dependent Appearance for Neural Radiance Fields](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2112.03907/) (2021)
- [Point-NeRF: Point-based Neural Radiance Fields](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2201.08845/) (2022)
- [NeRV: Neural Reflectance and Visibility Fields for Relighting and View Synthesis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2012.03927/) (2020)
- [HumanNeRF: Free-viewpoint Rendering of Moving People from Monocular Video](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2201.04127/) (2022)
- [Dynamic Neural Radiance Fields for Monocular 4D Facial Avatar Reconstruction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2012.03065/) (2020)
- [Dynamic View Synthesis from Dynamic Monocular Video](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2105.06468/) (2021)
- [Urban Radiance Fields](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2111.14643/) (2021)
- [DreamBooth3D: Subject-Driven Text-to-3D Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.13508/) (2023)
- [DONeRF: Towards Real-Time Rendering of Compact Neural Radiance Fields using Depth Oracle Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.03231/) (2021)
- [Editing Conditional Radiance Fields](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2105.06466/) (2021)

## Built on by (most cited first, 8 of 8)

- [VRP-UDF: Towards Unbiased Learning of Unsigned Distance Functions from Multi-view Images with Volume Rendering Priors](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.16396/) (2024)
- [STDR: Spatio-Temporal Decoupling for Real-Time Dynamic Scene Rendering](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.22400/) (2025)
- [L0-Sampler: An L0 Model Guided Volume Sampling for NeRF](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.07044/) (2023)
- [Efficient NeRF Optimization -- Not All Samples Remain Equally Hard](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2408.03193/) (2024)
- [NERFIFY: A Multi-Agent Framework for Turning NeRF Papers into Code](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.00805/) (2026)
- [Diversity-Driven View Subset Selection for Indoor Novel View Synthesis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2409.07098/) (2024)
- [A Probability-guided Sampler for Neural Implicit Surface Rendering](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2506.08619/) (2025)
- [MCBlock: Boosting Neural Radiance Field Training Speed by MCTS-based Dynamic-Resolution Ray Sampling](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2504.09878/) (2025)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Accelerating neural radiance fields training is of substantial practical value, as the ray sampling strategy profoundly impacts network convergence. More efficient ray sampling can thus directly enhance existing NeRF models' training efficiency. We therefore propose a novel ray sampling approach for neural radiance fields that improves training efficiency while retaining photorealistic rendering results. First, we analyze the relationship between the pixel loss distribution of sampled rays and rendering quality. This reveals redundancy in the original NeRF's uniform ray sampling. Guided by this finding, we develop a sampling method leveraging pixel regions and depth boundaries. Our main idea is to sample fewer rays in training views, yet with each ray more informative for scene fitting. Sampling probability increases in pixel areas exhibiting significant color and depth variation, greatly reducing wasteful rays from other regions without sacrificing precision. Through this method, not only can the convergence of the network be accelerated, but the spatial geometry of a scene can also be perceived more accurately. Rendering outputs are enhanced, especially for texture-complex regions. Experiments demonstrate that our method significantly outperforms state-of-the-art techniques on public benchmark datasets.
