# ProteusNeRF: Fast Lightweight NeRF Editing using 3D-Aware Image Context

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2310.09965 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2310.09965/

## Key facts

- Cited by 17 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 48 of its 59 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 15 Oct 2023.

## Builds on (most cited first, 30 of 48)

- [Adam: A Method for Stochastic Optimization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1412.6980/) (2014)
- [Learning Transferable Visual Models From Natural Language Supervision](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.00020/) (2021)
- [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)
- [Emerging Properties in Self-Supervised Vision Transformers](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2104.14294/) (2021)
- [Hierarchical Text-Conditional Image Generation with CLIP Latents](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2204.06125/) (2022)
- [Generative Adversarial Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2203.00667/) (2022)
- [Adding Conditional Control to Text-to-Image Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2302.05543/) (2023)
- [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)
- [InstructPix2Pix: Learning to Follow Image Editing Instructions](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2211.09800/) (2022)
- [Mip-NeRF 360: Unbounded Anti-Aliased Neural Radiance Fields](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2111.12077/) (2021)
- [Vision Transformers for Dense Prediction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.13413/) (2021)
- [Plenoxels: Radiance Fields without Neural Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2112.05131/) (2021)
- [TensoRF: Tensorial Radiance Fields](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2203.09517/) (2022)
- [Efficient Geometry-aware 3D Generative Adversarial Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2112.07945/) (2021)
- [Diffusion Models in Vision: A Survey](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2209.04747/) (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)
- [K-Planes: Explicit Radiance Fields in Space, Time, and Appearance](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2301.10241/) (2023)
- [Local Light Field Fusion: Practical View Synthesis with Prescriptive Sampling Guidelines](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1905.00889/) (2019)
- [Nerfstudio: A Modular Framework for Neural Radiance Field Development](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2302.04264/) (2023)
- [MultiDiffusion: Fusing Diffusion Paths for Controlled Image Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2302.08113/) (2023)
- [Zero-Shot Text-Guided Object Generation with Dream Fields](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2112.01455/) (2021)
- [FastNeRF: High-Fidelity Neural Rendering at 200FPS](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.10380/) (2021)
- [Latent-NeRF for Shape-Guided Generation of 3D Shapes and Textures](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2211.07600/) (2022)
- [Instruct-NeRF2NeRF: Editing 3D Scenes with Instructions](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.12789/) (2023)
- [Baking Neural Radiance Fields for Real-Time View Synthesis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.14645/) (2021)
- [Decomposing NeRF for Editing via Feature Field Distillation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2205.15585/) (2022)

## Built on by (most cited first, 17 of 17)

- [DGE: Direct Gaussian 3D Editing by Consistent Multi-view Editing](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.18929/) (2024)
- [SHAP-EDITOR: Instruction-guided Latent 3D Editing in Seconds](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.09246/) (2023)
- [Fast Multi-view Consistent 3D Editing with Video Priors](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2511.23172/) (2025)
- [NeRF Analogies: Example-Based Visual Attribute Transfer for NeRFs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2402.08622/) (2024)
- [ICE-G: Image Conditional Editing of 3D Gaussian Splats](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.08488/) (2024)
- [NeRF-Insert: 3D Local Editing with Multimodal Control Signals](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.19204/) (2024)
- [SVG-Head: Hybrid Surface-Volumetric Gaussians for High-Fidelity Head Reconstruction and Real-Time Editing](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2508.09597/) (2025)
- [Edit in 2D, Verify in 3D: Reinforcement Learning for Multi-view Consistent Scene Editing](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.03143/) (2026)
- [IReNe: Instant Recoloring of Neural Radiance Fields](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2405.19876/) (2024)
- [DisCo3D: Distilling Multi-View Consistency for 3D Scene Editing](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2508.01684/) (2025)
- [3D-Consistent Multi-View Editing by Correspondence Guidance](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2511.22228/) (2025)
- [InfoGaussian: Structure-Aware Dynamic Gaussians through Lightweight Information Shaping](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.05897/) (2024)
- [InstructMix2Mix: Consistent Sparse-View Editing Through Multi-View Model Personalization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2511.14899/) (2025)
- [VIRGi: View-dependent Instant Recoloring of 3D Gaussians Splats](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.02986/) (2026)
- [InStyle: Instant Appearance Stylization of 3D Shapes](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2512.03683/) (2025)
- [Catalyst4D: High-Fidelity 3D-to-4D Scene Editing via Dynamic Propagation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.12766/) (2026)
- [GeM-NR: Geometry-Aware Multi-View Editing for Nonrigid Scene Changes](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2606.05142/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Neural Radiance Fields (NeRFs) have recently emerged as a popular option for photo-realistic object capture due to their ability to faithfully capture high-fidelity volumetric content even from handheld video input. Although much research has been devoted to efficient optimization leading to real-time training and rendering, options for interactive editing NeRFs remain limited. We present a very simple but effective neural network architecture that is fast and efficient while maintaining a low memory footprint. This architecture can be incrementally guided through user-friendly image-based edits. Our representation allows straightforward object selection via semantic feature distillation at the training stage. More importantly, we propose a local 3D-aware image context to facilitate view-consistent image editing that can then be distilled into fine-tuned NeRFs, via geometric and appearance adjustments. We evaluate our setup on a variety of examples to demonstrate appearance and geometric edits and report 10-30x speedup over concurrent work focusing on text-guided NeRF editing. Video results can be seen on our project webpage at https://proteusnerf.github.io.