# Amodal Completion via Progressive Mixed Context Diffusion

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2312.15540 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.15540/

## Key facts

- Cited by 38 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 42 of its 61 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 24 Dec 2023.

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

- [Attention Is All You Need](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1706.03762/) (2017)
- [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)
- [U-Net: Convolutional Networks for Biomedical Image Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1505.04597/) (2015)
- [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)
- [Denoising Diffusion Implicit Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2010.02502/) (2020)
- [Diffusion Models Beat GANs on Image Synthesis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2105.05233/) (2021)
- [Deep Unsupervised Learning using Nonequilibrium Thermodynamics](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1503.03585/) (2015)
- [Hierarchical Text-Conditional Image Generation with CLIP Latents](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2204.06125/) (2022)
- [Adding Conditional Control to Text-to-Image Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2302.05543/) (2023)
- [Improved Denoising Diffusion Probabilistic Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2102.09672/) (2021)
- [GLIDE: Towards Photorealistic Image Generation and Editing with Text-Guided Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2112.10741/) (2021)
- [Grounding DINO: Marrying DINO with Grounded Pre-Training for Open-Set Object Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.05499/) (2023)
- [Prompt-to-Prompt Image Editing with Cross Attention Control](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2208.01626/) (2022)
- [Zero-1-to-3: Zero-shot One Image to 3D Object](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.11328/) (2023)
- [Resolution-robust Large Mask Inpainting with Fourier Convolutions](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2109.07161/) (2021)
- [The Open Images Dataset V4: Unified image classification, object detection, and visual relationship detection at scale](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1811.00982/) (2018)
- [Label-Efficient Semantic Segmentation with Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2112.03126/) (2021)
- [Paint by Example: Exemplar-based Image Editing with Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2211.13227/) (2022)
- [Emergent Correspondence from Image Diffusion](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2306.03881/) (2023)
- [Training-Free Structured Diffusion Guidance for Compositional Text-to-Image Synthesis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2212.05032/) (2022)
- [Multi-Object Representation Learning with Iterative Variational Inference](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1903.00450/) (2019)
- [DreamSim: Learning New Dimensions of Human Visual Similarity using Synthetic Data](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2306.09344/) (2023)
- [Training-Free Layout Control with Cross-Attention Guidance](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2304.03373/) (2023)
- [A Tale of Two Features: Stable Diffusion Complements DINO for Zero-Shot Semantic Correspondence](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.15347/) (2023)
- [GENESIS: Generative Scene Inference and Sampling with Object-Centric Latent Representations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1907.13052/) (2019)
- [DragonDiffusion: Enabling Drag-style Manipulation on Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2307.02421/) (2023)
- [Localizing Object-level Shape Variations with Text-to-Image Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.11306/) (2023)
- [Semantic Amodal Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1509.01329/) (2015)

## Built on by (most cited first, 30 of 38)

- [SAM 3D: 3Dfy Anything in Images](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2511.16624/) (2025)
- [pix2gestalt: Amodal Segmentation by Synthesizing Wholes](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2401.14398/) (2024)
- [Gen3DSR: Generalizable 3D Scene Reconstruction via Divide and Conquer from a Single View](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.03421/) (2024)
- [Amodal3R: Amodal 3D Reconstruction from Occluded 2D Images](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.13439/) (2025)
- [Amodal Ground Truth and Completion in the Wild](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.17247/) (2023)
- [Open-World Amodal Appearance Completion](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2411.13019/) (2024)
- [HiScene: Creating Hierarchical 3D Scenes with Isometric View Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2504.13072/) (2025)
- [DreamLayer: Simultaneous Multi-Layer Generation via Diffusion Mode](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.12838/) (2025)
- [Using Diffusion Priors for Video Amodal Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2412.04623/) (2024)
- [Elucidating Optimal Reward-Diversity Tradeoffs in Text-to-Image Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2409.06493/) (2024)
- [MOVIS: Enhancing Multi-Object Novel View Synthesis for Indoor Scenes](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2412.11457/) (2024)
- [TACO: Taming Diffusion for in-the-wild Video Amodal Completion](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.12049/) (2025)
- [DeOcc-1-to-3: 3D De-Occlusion from a Single Image via Self-Supervised Multi-View Diffusion](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2506.21544/) (2025)
- [GENA3D: Generative Amodal 3D Modeling by Bridging 2D Priors and 3D Coherence](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2511.21945/) (2025)
- [Amodal Instance Segmentation with Diffusion Shape Prior Estimation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2409.18256/) (2024)
- [A Diffusion-Based Framework for Occluded Object Movement](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2504.01873/) (2025)
- [Unlocking Constraints: Source-Free Occlusion-Aware Seamless Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2506.21198/) (2025)
- [TARGO: Benchmarking Target-driven Object Grasping under Occlusions](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.06168/) (2024)
- [BLS-GAN: A Deep Layer Separation Framework for Eliminating Bone Overlap in Conventional Radiographs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2409.07304/) (2024)
- [Unveiling the Invisible: Reasoning Complex Occlusions Amodally with AURA](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.10225/) (2025)
- [Multi-Agent Amodal Completion: Direct Synthesis with Fine-Grained Semantic Guidance](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2509.17757/) (2025)
- [EGM: Efficient Visual Grounding Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2601.13633/) (2026)
- [Referring Layer Decomposition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2602.19358/) (2026)
- [AmodalSVG: Amodal Image Vectorization via Semantic Layer Peeling](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2604.10940/) (2026)
- [SynergyAmodal: Deocclude Anything with Text Control](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2504.19506/) (2025)
- [CompleteMe: Reference-based Human Image Completion](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2504.20042/) (2025)
- [Training for X-Ray Vision: Amodal Segmentation, Amodal Content Completion, and View-Invariant Object Representation from Multi-Camera Video](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2507.00339/) (2025)
- [EscherNet++: Simultaneous Amodal Completion and Scalable View Synthesis through Masked Fine-Tuning and Enhanced Feed-Forward 3D Reconstruction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2507.07410/) (2025)
- [Occlusion-Aware Temporally Consistent Amodal Completion for 3D Human-Object Interaction Reconstruction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2507.08137/) (2025)
- [Contact-Aware Amodal Completion for Human-Object Interaction via Multi-Regional Inpainting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2508.00427/) (2025)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Our brain can effortlessly recognize objects even when partially hidden from view. Seeing the visible of the hidden is called amodal completion; however, this task remains a challenge for generative AI despite rapid progress. We propose to sidestep many of the difficulties of existing approaches, which typically involve a two-step process of predicting amodal masks and then generating pixels. Our method involves thinking outside the box, literally! We go outside the object bounding box to use its context to guide a pre-trained diffusion inpainting model, and then progressively grow the occluded object and trim the extra background. We overcome two technical challenges: 1) how to be free of unwanted co-occurrence bias, which tends to regenerate similar occluders, and 2) how to judge if an amodal completion has succeeded. Our amodal completion method exhibits improved photorealistic completion results compared to existing approaches in numerous successful completion cases. And the best part? It doesn't require any special training or fine-tuning of models.