# Forward Flow for Novel View Synthesis of Dynamic Scenes

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2309.17390 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2309.17390/

## Key facts

- Cited by 68 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 50 of its 67 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 29 Sep 2023.

## Builds on (most cited first, 30 of 50)

- [The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Deep Features as a Perceptual Metric](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1801.03924/) (2018)
- [Instant Neural Graphics Primitives with a Multiresolution Hash Encoding](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2201.05989/) (2022)
- [Mip-NeRF: A Multiscale Representation for Anti-Aliasing Neural Radiance Fields](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.13415/) (2021)
- [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)
- [NeRF in the Wild: Neural Radiance Fields for Unconstrained Photo Collections](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2008.02268/) (2020)
- [Nerfies: Deformable Neural Radiance Fields](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2011.12948/) (2020)
- [Direct Voxel Grid Optimization: Super-fast Convergence for Radiance Fields Reconstruction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2111.11215/) (2021)
- [Neural Sparse Voxel Fields](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2007.11571/) (2020)
- [PlenOctrees for Real-time Rendering of Neural Radiance Fields](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.14024/) (2021)
- [NeRF++: Analyzing and Improving Neural Radiance Fields](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2010.07492/) (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)
- [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)
- [Differentiable Volumetric Rendering: Learning Implicit 3D Representations without 3D Supervision](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1912.07372/) (2019)
- [KiloNeRF: Speeding up Neural Radiance Fields with Thousands of Tiny MLPs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.13744/) (2021)
- [RegNeRF: Regularizing Neural Radiance Fields for View Synthesis from Sparse Inputs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2112.00724/) (2021)
- [NeRV: Neural Reflectance and Visibility Fields for Relighting and View Synthesis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2012.03927/) (2020)
- [Non-Rigid Neural Radiance Fields: Reconstruction and Novel View Synthesis of a Dynamic Scene From Monocular Video](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2012.12247/) (2020)
- [NeRD: Neural Reflectance Decomposition from Image Collections](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2012.03918/) (2020)
- [Dynamic View Synthesis from Dynamic Monocular Video](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2105.06468/) (2021)
- [Space-time Neural Irradiance Fields for Free-Viewpoint Video](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2011.12950/) (2020)
- [Advances in Neural Rendering](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2111.05849/) (2021)
- [Fast Dynamic Radiance Fields with Time-Aware Neural Voxels](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2205.15285/) (2022)
- [Neural Point-Based Graphics](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1906.08240/) (2019)
- [Softmax Splatting for Video Frame Interpolation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2003.05534/) (2020)
- [State of the Art on Neural Rendering](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2004.03805/) (2020)
- [Mixture of Volumetric Primitives for Efficient Neural Rendering](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.01954/) (2021)

## Built on by (most cited first, 30 of 68)

- [4D Gaussian Splatting for Real-Time Dynamic Scene Rendering](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2310.08528/) (2023)
- [SC-GS: Sparse-Controlled Gaussian Splatting for Editable Dynamic Scenes](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.14937/) (2023)
- [A Survey on 3D Gaussian Splatting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2401.03890/) (2024)
- [PhysDreamer: Physics-Based Interaction with 3D Objects via Video Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.13026/) (2024)
- [PhysTwin: Physics-Informed Reconstruction and Simulation of Deformable Objects from Videos](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.17973/) (2025)
- [Neural Parametric Gaussians for Monocular Non-Rigid Object Reconstruction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.01196/) (2023)
- [TalkingGaussian: Structure-Persistent 3D Talking Head Synthesis via Gaussian Splatting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.15264/) (2024)
- [PIE-NeRF: Physics-based Interactive Elastodynamics with NeRF](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.13099/) (2023)
- [MoDGS: Dynamic Gaussian Splatting from Casually-captured Monocular Videos with Depth Priors](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.00434/) (2024)
- [Grid4D: 4D Decomposed Hash Encoding for High-Fidelity Dynamic Gaussian Splatting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.20815/) (2024)
- [DeformGS: Scene Flow in Highly Deformable Scenes for Deformable Object Manipulation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.00583/) (2023)
- [Gaussian Splashing: Unified Particles for Versatile Motion Synthesis and Rendering](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2401.15318/) (2024)
- [4D Gaussian Splatting with Scale-aware Residual Field and Adaptive Optimization for Real-time Rendering of Temporally Complex Dynamic Scenes](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2412.06299/) (2024)
- [Instant Gaussian Stream: Fast and Generalizable Streaming of Dynamic Scene Reconstruction via Gaussian Splatting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.16979/) (2025)
- [MoDec-GS: Global-to-Local Motion Decomposition and Temporal Interval Adjustment for Compact Dynamic 3D Gaussian Splatting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2501.03714/) (2025)
- [Recent Trends in 3D Reconstruction of General Non-Rigid Scenes](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.15064/) (2024)
- [DN-4DGS: Denoised Deformable Network with Temporal-Spatial Aggregation for Dynamic Scene Rendering](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.13607/) (2024)
- [CoDa-4DGS: Dynamic Gaussian Splatting with Context and Deformation Awareness for Autonomous Driving](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.06744/) (2025)
- [SpectroMotion: Dynamic 3D Reconstruction of Specular Scenes](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.17249/) (2024)
- [MVGS: Multi-view Regulated Gaussian Splatting for Novel View Synthesis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.02103/) (2024)
- [D-MiSo: Editing Dynamic 3D Scenes using Multi-Gaussians Soup](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2405.14276/) (2024)
- [7DGS: Unified Spatial-Temporal-Angular Gaussian Splatting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.07946/) (2025)
- [Improving Physics-Augmented Continuum Neural Radiance Field-Based Geometry-Agnostic System Identification with Lagrangian Particle Optimization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.04155/) (2024)
- [DaReNeRF: Direction-aware Representation for Dynamic Scenes](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.02265/) (2024)
- [Efficient Gaussian Splatting for Monocular Dynamic Scene Rendering via Sparse Time-Variant Attribute Modeling](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2502.20378/) (2025)
- [UniPhy: Learning a Unified Constitutive Model for Inverse Physics Simulation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.16971/) (2025)
- [Factorized Motion Fields for Fast Sparse Input Dynamic View Synthesis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.11669/) (2024)
- [KFD-NeRF: Rethinking Dynamic NeRF with Kalman Filter](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.13185/) (2024)
- [HAIF-GS: Hierarchical and Induced Flow-Guided Gaussian Splatting for Dynamic Scene](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2506.09518/) (2025)
- [Light4GS: Lightweight Compact 4D Gaussian Splatting Generation via Context Model](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.13948/) (2025)

## Abstract (arXiv)

This paper proposes a neural radiance field (NeRF) approach for novel view synthesis of dynamic scenes using forward warping. Existing methods often adopt a static NeRF to represent the canonical space, and render dynamic images at other time steps by mapping the sampled 3D points back to the canonical space with the learned backward flow field. However, this backward flow field is non-smooth and discontinuous, which is difficult to be fitted by commonly used smooth motion models. To address this problem, we propose to estimate the forward flow field and directly warp the canonical radiance field to other time steps. Such forward flow field is smooth and continuous within the object region, which benefits the motion model learning. To achieve this goal, we represent the canonical radiance field with voxel grids to enable efficient forward warping, and propose a differentiable warping process, including an average splatting operation and an inpaint network, to resolve the many-to-one and one-to-many mapping issues. Thorough experiments show that our method outperforms existing methods in both novel view rendering and motion modeling, demonstrating the effectiveness of our forward flow motion modeling. Project page: https://npucvr.github.io/ForwardFlowDNeRF