# Scene-LLM: Extending Language Model for 3D Visual Understanding and Reasoning

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2403.11401 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.11401/

## Key facts

- Cited by 175 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Placed in Spatial and embodied reasoning, one of 17 directions in LLM reasoning.
- Builds on 77 of its 87 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 18 Mar 2024.

## Placed in

- LLM reasoning / [Spatial and embodied reasoning](https://mlsanity.com/lr/spatial-and-embodied-reasoning/)

## Builds on (most cited first, 30 of 77)

- [Learning Transferable Visual Models From Natural Language Supervision](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.00020/) (2021)
- [Llama 2: Open Foundation and Fine-Tuned Chat Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2307.09288/) (2023)
- [Visual Instruction Tuning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2304.08485/) (2023)
- [Hierarchical Text-Conditional Image Generation with CLIP Latents](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2204.06125/) (2022)
- [BLIP-2: Bootstrapping Language-Image Pre-training with Frozen Image Encoders and Large Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2301.12597/) (2023)
- [PointNet: Deep Learning on Point Sets for 3D Classification and Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1612.00593/) (2016)
- [Flamingo: a Visual Language Model for Few-Shot Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2204.14198/) (2022)
- [ScanNet: Richly-annotated 3D Reconstructions of Indoor Scenes](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1702.04405/) (2017)
- [MiniGPT-4: Enhancing Vision-Language Understanding with Advanced Large Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2304.10592/) (2023)
- [Do As I Can, Not As I Say: Grounding Language in Robotic Affordances](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2204.01691/) (2022)
- [PaLM-E: An Embodied Multimodal Language Model](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.03378/) (2023)
- [Occupancy Networks: Learning 3D Reconstruction in Function Space](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1812.03828/) (2018)
- [Point Transformer](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2011.00931/) (2020)
- [ALFWorld: Aligning Text and Embodied Environments for Interactive Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2010.03768/) (2020)
- [Kosmos-2: Grounding Multimodal Large Language Models to the World](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2306.14824/) (2023)
- [Language Models as Zero-Shot Planners: Extracting Actionable Knowledge for Embodied Agents](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2201.07207/) (2022)
- [Vision-and-Language Navigation: Interpreting visually-grounded navigation instructions in real environments](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1711.07280/) (2017)
- [AI2-THOR: An Interactive 3D Environment for Visual AI](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1712.05474/) (2017)
- [A Generalist Agent](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2205.06175/) (2022)
- [ALFRED: A Benchmark for Interpreting Grounded Instructions for Everyday Tasks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1912.01734/) (2019)
- [Large Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2307.05782/) (2023)
- [VoxPoser: Composable 3D Value Maps for Robotic Manipulation with Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2307.05973/) (2023)
- [Multimodal Few-Shot Learning with Frozen Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2106.13884/) (2021)
- [Deep Hough Voting for 3D Object Detection in Point Clouds](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1904.09664/) (2019)
- [MiniGPT-v2: large language model as a unified interface for vision-language multi-task learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2310.09478/) (2023)
- [ProgPrompt: Generating Situated Robot Task Plans using Large Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2209.11302/) (2022)
- [Habitat-Matterport 3D Dataset (HM3D): 1000 Large-scale 3D Environments for Embodied AI](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2109.08238/) (2021)
- [LERF: Language Embedded Radiance Fields](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.09553/) (2023)
- [MM-REACT: Prompting ChatGPT for Multimodal Reasoning and Action](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.11381/) (2023)
- [Ferret: Refer and Ground Anything Anywhere at Any Granularity](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2310.07704/) (2023)

## Built on by (most cited first, 30 of 175)

- [SpatialVLA: Exploring Spatial Representations for Visual-Language-Action Model](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2501.15830/) (2025)
- [Spatial-MLLM: Boosting MLLM Capabilities in Visual-based Spatial Intelligence](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.23747/) (2025)
- [NaVILA: Legged Robot Vision-Language-Action Model for Navigation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2412.04453/) (2024)
- [LLaVA-3D: A Simple yet Effective Pathway to Empowering LMMs with 3D-awareness](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2409.18125/) (2024)
- [Video-3D LLM: Learning Position-Aware Video Representation for 3D Scene Understanding](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2412.00493/) (2024)
- [From Flatland to Space: Teaching Vision-Language Models to Perceive and Reason in 3D](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.22976/) (2025)
- [StreamVLN: Streaming Vision-and-Language Navigation via SlowFast Context Modeling](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2507.05240/) (2025)
- [Grounded 3D-LLM with Referent Tokens](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2405.10370/) (2024)
- [SAT: Dynamic Spatial Aptitude Training for Multimodal Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2412.07755/) (2024)
- [GPT4Scene: Understand 3D Scenes from Videos with Vision-Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2501.01428/) (2025)
- [LayoutVLM: Differentiable Optimization of 3D Layout via Vision-Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2412.02193/) (2024)
- [MM-Spatial: Exploring 3D Spatial Understanding in Multimodal LLMs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.13111/) (2025)
- [3DRS: MLLMs Need 3D-Aware Representation Supervision for Scene Understanding](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2506.01946/) (2025)
- [3D-LLaVA: Towards Generalist 3D LMMs with Omni Superpoint Transformer](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2501.01163/) (2025)
- [SeeGround: See and Ground for Zero-Shot Open-Vocabulary 3D Visual Grounding](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2412.04383/) (2024)
- [Ross3D: Reconstructive Visual Instruction Tuning with 3D-Awareness](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2504.01901/) (2025)
- [4D-VLA: Spatiotemporal Vision-Language-Action Pretraining with Cross-Scene Calibration](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2506.22242/) (2025)
- [SoFar: Language-Grounded Orientation Bridges Spatial Reasoning and Object Manipulation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2502.13143/) (2025)
- [How Far are VLMs from Visual Spatial Intelligence? A Benchmark-Driven Perspective](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2509.18905/) (2025)
- [How to Enable LLM with 3D Capacity? A Survey of Spatial Reasoning in LLM](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2504.05786/) (2025)
- [Multimodal Fusion and Vision-Language Models: A Survey for Robot Vision](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2504.02477/) (2025)
- [LSceneLLM: Enhancing Large 3D Scene Understanding Using Adaptive Visual Preferences](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2412.01292/) (2024)
- [SpatialBench: Benchmarking Multimodal Large Language Models for Spatial Cognition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2511.21471/) (2025)
- [LLplace: The 3D Indoor Scene Layout Generation and Editing via Large Language Model](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.03866/) (2024)
- [3D Aware Region Prompted Vision Language Model](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2509.13317/) (2025)
- [Multimodal Spatial Reasoning in the Large Model Era: A Survey and Benchmarks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2510.25760/) (2025)
- [Beyond Bare Queries: Open-Vocabulary Object Grounding with 3D Scene Graph](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.07113/) (2024)
- [How Far Are We From AGI: Are LLMs All We Need?](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2405.10313/) (2024)
- [ArtiScene: Language-Driven Artistic 3D Scene Generation Through Image Intermediary](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2506.00742/) (2025)
- [SpaceDrive: Infusing Spatial Awareness into VLM-based Autonomous Driving](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2512.10719/) (2025)

## Abstract (arXiv)

This paper introduces Scene-LLM, a 3D-visual-language model that enhances embodied agents' abilities in interactive 3D indoor environments by integrating the reasoning strengths of Large Language Models (LLMs). Scene-LLM adopts a hybrid 3D visual feature representation, that incorporates dense spatial information and supports scene state updates. The model employs a projection layer to efficiently project these features in the pre-trained textual embedding space, enabling effective interpretation of 3D visual information. Unique to our approach is the integration of both scene-level and ego-centric 3D information. This combination is pivotal for interactive planning, where scene-level data supports global planning and ego-centric data is important for localization. Notably, we use ego-centric 3D frame features for feature alignment, an efficient technique that enhances the model's ability to align features of small objects within the scene. Our experiments with Scene-LLM demonstrate its strong capabilities in dense captioning, question answering, and interactive planning. We believe Scene-LLM advances the field of 3D visual understanding and reasoning, offering new possibilities for sophisticated agent interactions in indoor settings.