# PonderV2: Pave the Way for 3D Foundation Model with A Universal Pre-training Paradigm

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2310.08586 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2310.08586/

## Key facts

- Cited by 56 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 119 of its 149 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 12 Oct 2023.

## Builds on (most cited first, 30 of 119)

- [Learning Transferable Visual Models From Natural Language Supervision](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.00020/) (2021)
- [Language Models are Few-Shot Learners](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2005.14165/) (2020)
- [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)
- [LLaMA: Open and Efficient Foundation Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2302.13971/) (2023)
- [Llama 2: Open Foundation and Fine-Tuned Chat Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2307.09288/) (2023)
- [A Simple Framework for Contrastive Learning of Visual Representations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2002.05709/) (2020)
- [Segment Anything](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2304.02643/) (2023)
- [Momentum Contrast for Unsupervised Visual Representation Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1911.05722/) (2019)
- [Masked Autoencoders Are Scalable Vision Learners](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2111.06377/) (2021)
- [Mask R-CNN](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1703.06870/) (2017)
- [PaLM: Scaling Language Modeling with Pathways](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2204.02311/) (2022)
- [PointNet: Deep Learning on Point Sets for 3D Classification and Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1612.00593/) (2016)
- [nuScenes: A multimodal dataset for autonomous driving](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1903.11027/) (2019)
- [PointNet++: Deep Hierarchical Feature Learning on Point Sets in a Metric Space](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1706.02413/) (2017)
- [Flamingo: a Visual Language Model for Few-Shot Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2204.14198/) (2022)
- [BLIP: Bootstrapping Language-Image Pre-training for Unified Vision-Language Understanding and Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2201.12086/) (2022)
- [Instant Neural Graphics Primitives with a Multiresolution Hash Encoding](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2201.05989/) (2022)
- [A ConvNet for the 2020s](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2201.03545/) (2022)
- [ScanNet: Richly-annotated 3D Reconstructions of Indoor Scenes](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1702.04405/) (2017)
- [RT-2: Vision-Language-Action Models Transfer Web Knowledge to Robotic Control](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2307.15818/) (2023)
- [ShapeNet: An Information-Rich 3D Model Repository](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1512.03012/) (2015)
- [BEiT: BERT Pre-Training of Image Transformers](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2106.08254/) (2021)
- [Improved Baselines with Momentum Contrastive Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2003.04297/) (2020)
- [PaLM-E: An Embodied Multimodal Language Model](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.03378/) (2023)
- [RT-1: Robotics Transformer for Real-World Control at Scale](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2212.06817/) (2022)
- [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)
- [pixelNeRF: Neural Radiance Fields from One or Few Images](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2012.02190/) (2020)
- [Point Transformer](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2011.00931/) (2020)

## Built on by (most cited first, 30 of 56)

- [Point Transformer V3: Simpler, Faster, Stronger](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.10035/) (2023)
- [Metric3Dv2: A Versatile Monocular Geometric Foundation Model for Zero-shot Metric Depth and Surface Normal Estimation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.15506/) (2024)
- [Grounded 3D-LLM with Referent Tokens](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2405.10370/) (2024)
- [MeshXL: Neural Coordinate Field for Generative 3D Foundation Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2405.20853/) (2024)
- [Aether: Geometric-Aware Unified World Modeling](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.18945/) (2025)
- [DriveWorld: 4D Pre-trained Scene Understanding via World Models for Autonomous Driving](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2405.04390/) (2024)
- [Point Cloud Mamba: Point Cloud Learning via State Space Model](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.00762/) (2024)
- [HERMES: A Unified Self-Driving World Model for Simultaneous 3D Scene Understanding and Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2501.14729/) (2025)
- [Point Cloud Matters: Rethinking the Impact of Different Observation Spaces on Robot Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2402.02500/) (2024)
- [Concerto: Joint 2D-3D Self-Supervised Learning Emerges Spatial Representations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2510.23607/) (2025)
- [OA-CNNs: Omni-Adaptive Sparse CNNs for 3D Semantic Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.14418/) (2024)
- [DeepVerse: 4D Autoregressive Video Generation as a World Model](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2506.01103/) (2025)
- [FantasyWorld: Geometry-Consistent World Modeling via Unified Video and 3D Prediction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2509.21657/) (2025)
- [Detect Anything 3D in the Wild](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2504.07958/) (2025)
- [SPA: 3D Spatial-Awareness Enables Effective Embodied Representation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.08208/) (2024)
- [GroupContrast: Semantic-aware Self-supervised Representation Learning for 3D Understanding](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.09639/) (2024)
- [EFM3D: A Benchmark for Measuring Progress Towards 3D Egocentric Foundation Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.10224/) (2024)
- [Forging Vision Foundation Models for Autonomous Driving: Challenges, Methodologies, and Opportunities](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2401.08045/) (2024)
- [An End-to-End Robust Point Cloud Semantic Segmentation Network with Single-Step Conditional Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2411.16308/) (2024)
- [Locate 3D: Real-World Object Localization via Self-Supervised Learning in 3D](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2504.14151/) (2025)
- [Hulk: A Universal Knowledge Translator for Human-Centric Tasks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.01697/) (2023)
- [NeRF-MAE: Masked AutoEncoders for Self-Supervised 3D Representation Learning for Neural Radiance Fields](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.01300/) (2024)
- [Lift3D: Zero-Shot Lifting of Any 2D Vision Model to 3D](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.18922/) (2024)
- [Applications of Large Scale Foundation Models for Autonomous Driving](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.12144/) (2023)
- [CooPre: Cooperative Pretraining for V2X Cooperative Perception](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2408.11241/) (2024)
- [ConDense: Consistent 2D/3D Pre-training for Dense and Sparse Features from Multi-View Images](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2408.17027/) (2024)
- [LeAP: Consistent multi-domain 3D labeling using Foundation Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2502.03901/) (2025)
- [Self-supervised Learning of LiDAR 3D Point Clouds via 2D-3D Neural Calibration](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2401.12452/) (2024)
- [Efficient Depth-Guided Urban View Synthesis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.12395/) (2024)
- [ARKit LabelMaker: A New Scale for Indoor 3D Scene Understanding](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.13924/) (2024)

## Abstract (arXiv)

In contrast to numerous NLP and 2D vision foundational models, learning a 3D foundational model poses considerably greater challenges. This is primarily due to the inherent data variability and diversity of downstream tasks. In this paper, we introduce a novel universal 3D pre-training framework designed to facilitate the acquisition of efficient 3D representation, thereby establishing a pathway to 3D foundational models. Considering that informative 3D features should encode rich geometry and appearance cues that can be utilized to render realistic images, we propose to learn 3D representations by differentiable neural rendering. We train a 3D backbone with a devised volumetric neural renderer by comparing the rendered with the real images. Notably, our approach seamlessly integrates the learned 3D encoder into various downstream tasks. These tasks encompass not only high-level challenges such as 3D detection and segmentation but also low-level objectives like 3D reconstruction and image synthesis, spanning both indoor and outdoor scenarios. Besides, we also illustrate the capability of pre-training a 2D backbone using the proposed methodology, surpassing conventional pre-training methods by a large margin. For the first time, PonderV2 achieves state-of-the-art performance on 11 indoor and outdoor benchmarks, implying its effectiveness. Code and models are available at https://github.com/OpenGVLab/PonderV2.