# SpecNeRF: Gaussian Directional Encoding for Specular Reflections

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2312.13102 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.13102/

## Key facts

- Cited by 30 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 52 of its 67 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 20 Dec 2023.

## Builds on (most cited first, 30 of 52)

- [PyTorch: An Imperative Style, High-Performance Deep Learning Library](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1912.01703/) (2019)
- [The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Deep Features as a Perceptual Metric](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1801.03924/) (2018)
- [3D Gaussian Splatting for Real-Time Radiance Field Rendering](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2308.04079/) (2023)
- [Instant Neural Graphics Primitives with a Multiresolution Hash Encoding](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2201.05989/) (2022)
- [Fourier Features Let Networks Learn High Frequency Functions in Low Dimensional Domains](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2006.10739/) (2020)
- [Mip-NeRF 360: Unbounded Anti-Aliased Neural Radiance Fields](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2111.12077/) (2021)
- [Towards Robust Monocular Depth Estimation: Mixing Datasets for Zero-shot Cross-dataset Transfer](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1907.01341/) (2019)
- [TensoRF: Tensorial Radiance Fields](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2203.09517/) (2022)
- [ZoeDepth: Zero-shot Transfer by Combining Relative and Metric Depth](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2302.12288/) (2023)
- [Nerfstudio: A Modular Framework for Neural Radiance Field Development](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2302.04264/) (2023)
- [Ref-NeRF: Structured View-Dependent Appearance for Neural Radiance Fields](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2112.03907/) (2021)
- [Neural Fields in Visual Computing and Beyond](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2111.11426/) (2021)
- [NeRV: Neural Reflectance and Visibility Fields for Relighting and View Synthesis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2012.03927/) (2020)
- [MonoSDF: Exploring Monocular Geometric Cues for Neural Implicit Surface Reconstruction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2206.00665/) (2022)
- [Neuralangelo: High-Fidelity Neural Surface Reconstruction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2306.03092/) (2023)
- [NeRD: Neural Reflectance Decomposition from Image Collections](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2012.03918/) (2020)
- [Advances in Neural Rendering](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2111.05849/) (2021)
- [Omnidata: A Scalable Pipeline for Making Multi-Task Mid-Level Vision Datasets from 3D Scans](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2110.04994/) (2021)
- [PhySG: Inverse Rendering with Spherical Gaussians for Physics-based Material Editing and Relighting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2104.00674/) (2021)
- [FreeNeRF: Improving Few-shot Neural Rendering with Free Frequency Regularization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.07418/) (2023)
- [Neural-PIL: Neural Pre-Integrated Lighting for Reflectance Decomposition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2110.14373/) (2021)
- [Inverse Rendering for Complex Indoor Scenes: Shape, Spatially-Varying Lighting and SVBRDF from a Single Image](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1905.02722/) (2019)
- [Neural Reflectance Fields for Appearance Acquisition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2008.03824/) (2020)
- [Modeling Indirect Illumination for Inverse Rendering](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2204.06837/) (2022)
- [TensoIR: Tensorial Inverse Rendering](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2304.12461/) (2023)
- [NeRO: Neural Geometry and BRDF Reconstruction of Reflective Objects from Multiview Images](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.17398/) (2023)
- [NeRFReN: Neural Radiance Fields with Reflections](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2111.15234/) (2021)
- [NeRF for Outdoor Scene Relighting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2112.05140/) (2021)
- [NeRF-DS: Neural Radiance Fields for Dynamic Specular Objects](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.14435/) (2023)
- [NeILF: Neural Incident Light Field for Physically-based Material Estimation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2203.07182/) (2022)

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

- [3D Gaussian as a New Era: A Survey](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2402.07181/) (2024)
- [Spec-Gaussian: Anisotropic View-Dependent Appearance for 3D Gaussian Splatting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2402.15870/) (2024)
- [EnvGS: Modeling View-Dependent Appearance with Environment Gaussian](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2412.15215/) (2024)
- [NeRF-Casting: Improved View-Dependent Appearance with Consistent Reflections](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2405.14871/) (2024)
- [Ref-GS: Directional Factorization for 2D Gaussian Splatting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2412.00905/) (2024)
- [SpectroMotion: Dynamic 3D Reconstruction of Specular Scenes](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.17249/) (2024)
- [A Survey on 3D Gaussian Splatting Applications: Segmentation, Editing, and Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2508.09977/) (2025)
- [Mirror-3DGS: Incorporating Mirror Reflections into 3D Gaussian Splatting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.01168/) (2024)
- [GlossyGS: Inverse Rendering of Glossy Objects with 3D Gaussian Splatting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.13349/) (2024)
- [Generative Multiview Relighting for 3D Reconstruction under Extreme Illumination Variation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2412.15211/) (2024)
- [Neural Radiance Field-based Visual Rendering: A Comprehensive Review](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.00714/) (2024)
- [GS-ROR2: Bidirectional-guided 3DGS and SDF for Reflective Object Relighting and Reconstruction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.18544/) (2024)
- [NeISF++: Neural Incident Stokes Field for Polarized Inverse Rendering of Conductors and Dielectrics](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2411.10189/) (2024)
- [Planar Reflection-Aware Neural Radiance Fields](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2411.04984/) (2024)
- [Eye2Eye: A Simple Approach for Monocular-to-Stereo Video Synthesis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.00135/) (2025)
- [SpecGaussian with Latent Features: A High-quality Modeling of the View-dependent Appearance for 3D Gaussian Splatting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2409.05868/) (2024)
- [Reflections Unlock: Geometry-Aware Reflection Disentanglement in 3D Gaussian Splatting for Photorealistic Scenes Rendering](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2507.06103/) (2025)
- [RefGaussian: Disentangling Reflections from 3D Gaussian Splatting for Realistic Rendering](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.05852/) (2024)
- [PBIR-NIE: Glossy Object Capture under Non-Distant Lighting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2408.06878/) (2024)
- [Surf-NeRF: Surface Regularised Neural Radiance Fields](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2411.18652/) (2024)
- [NeRFs are Mirror Detectors: Using Structural Similarity for Multi-View Mirror Scene Reconstruction with 3D Surface Primitives](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2501.04074/) (2025)
- [RT-Splatting: Joint Reflection-Transmission Modeling with Gaussian Splatting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2605.18263/) (2026)
- [PEP-GS: Perceptually-Enhanced Precise Structured 3D Gaussians for View-Adaptive Rendering](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2411.05731/) (2024)
- [Material Transforms from Disentangled NeRF Representations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2411.08037/) (2024)
- [RefRef: A Dataset and Benchmark for Reconstructing Refractive and Reflective Objects](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.05848/) (2025)
- [TR-Gaussians: High-fidelity Real-time Rendering of Planar Transmission and Reflection with 3D Gaussian Splatting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2511.13009/) (2025)
- [Shoot-Bounce-3D: Single-Shot Occlusion-Aware 3D from Lidar by Decomposing Two-Bounce Light](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2512.06080/) (2025)
- [EAG-PT: Emission-Aware Gaussians and Path Tracing for Diffuse Indoor Scene Reconstruction and Editing](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2601.23065/) (2026)
- [Augmented Radiance Field: A General Framework for Enhanced Gaussian Splatting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2602.19916/) (2026)
- [PhyGaP: Physically-Grounded Gaussians with Polarization Cues](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.14001/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Neural radiance fields have achieved remarkable performance in modeling the appearance of 3D scenes. However, existing approaches still struggle with the view-dependent appearance of glossy surfaces, especially under complex lighting of indoor environments. Unlike existing methods, which typically assume distant lighting like an environment map, we propose a learnable Gaussian directional encoding to better model the view-dependent effects under near-field lighting conditions. Importantly, our new directional encoding captures the spatially-varying nature of near-field lighting and emulates the behavior of prefiltered environment maps. As a result, it enables the efficient evaluation of preconvolved specular color at any 3D location with varying roughness coefficients. We further introduce a data-driven geometry prior that helps alleviate the shape radiance ambiguity in reflection modeling. We show that our Gaussian directional encoding and geometry prior significantly improve the modeling of challenging specular reflections in neural radiance fields, which helps decompose appearance into more physically meaningful components.