# GECO: Generative Image-to-3D within a SECOnd

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2405.20327 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2405.20327/

## Key facts

- Cited by 6 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 74 of its 80 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 30 May 2024.

## Builds on (most cited first, 30 of 74)

- [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)
- [Distilling the Knowledge in a Neural Network](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1503.02531/) (2015)
- [Denoising Diffusion Implicit Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2010.02502/) (2020)
- [Score-Based Generative Modeling through Stochastic Differential Equations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2011.13456/) (2020)
- [Diffusion Models Beat GANs on Image Synthesis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2105.05233/) (2021)
- [Photorealistic Text-to-Image Diffusion Models with Deep Language Understanding](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2205.11487/) (2022)
- [3D Gaussian Splatting for Real-Time Radiance Field Rendering](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2308.04079/) (2023)
- [SDXL: Improving Latent Diffusion Models for High-Resolution Image Synthesis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2307.01952/) (2023)
- [Instant Neural Graphics Primitives with a Multiresolution Hash Encoding](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2201.05989/) (2022)
- [Elucidating the Design Space of Diffusion-Based Generative Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2206.00364/) (2022)
- [DreamFusion: Text-to-3D using 2D Diffusion](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2209.14988/) (2022)
- [Video Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2204.03458/) (2022)
- [DPM-Solver: A Fast ODE Solver for Diffusion Probabilistic Model Sampling in Around 10 Steps](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2206.00927/) (2022)
- [Consistency Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.01469/) (2023)
- [Imagen Video: High Definition Video Generation with Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2210.02303/) (2022)
- [pixelNeRF: Neural Radiance Fields from One or Few Images](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2012.02190/) (2020)
- [Zero-1-to-3: Zero-shot One Image to 3D Object](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.11328/) (2023)
- [Magic3D: High-Resolution Text-to-3D Content Creation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2211.10440/) (2022)
- [ProlificDreamer: High-Fidelity and Diverse Text-to-3D Generation with Variational Score Distillation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.16213/) (2023)
- [Efficient Geometry-aware 3D Generative Adversarial Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2112.07945/) (2021)
- [One-step Diffusion with Distribution Matching Distillation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.18828/) (2023)
- [MVDream: Multi-view Diffusion for 3D Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2308.16512/) (2023)
- [LRM: Large Reconstruction Model for Single Image to 3D](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.04400/) (2023)
- [Latent Consistency Models: Synthesizing High-Resolution Images with Few-Step Inference](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2310.04378/) (2023)
- [DreamGaussian: Generative Gaussian Splatting for Efficient 3D Content Creation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2309.16653/) (2023)
- [Objaverse-XL: A Universe of 10M+ 3D Objects](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2307.05663/) (2023)
- [Adversarial Diffusion Distillation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.17042/) (2023)
- [LGM: Large Multi-View Gaussian Model for High-Resolution 3D Content Creation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2402.05054/) (2024)

## Built on by (most cited first, 6 of 6)

- [DiffPano: Scalable and Consistent Text to Panorama Generation with Spherical Epipolar-Aware Diffusion](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.24203/) (2024)
- [Prometheus: 3D-Aware Latent Diffusion Models for Feed-Forward Text-to-3D Scene Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2412.21117/) (2024)
- [OFTSR: One-Step Flow for Image Super-Resolution with Tunable Fidelity-Realism Trade-offs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2412.09465/) (2024)
- [A Survey on 3D Gaussian Splatting Applications: Segmentation, Editing, and Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2508.09977/) (2025)
- [Turbo3D: Ultra-fast Text-to-3D Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2412.04470/) (2024)
- [Zero-1-to-G: Taming Pretrained 2D Diffusion Model for Direct 3D Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2501.05427/) (2025)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Recent years have seen significant advancements in 3D generation. While methods like score distillation achieve impressive results, they often require extensive per-scene optimization, which limits their time efficiency. On the other hand, reconstruction-based approaches are more efficient but tend to compromise quality due to their limited ability to handle uncertainty. We introduce GECO, a novel method for high-quality 3D generative modeling that operates within a second. Our approach addresses the prevalent issues of uncertainty and inefficiency in existing methods through a two-stage approach. In the first stage, we train a single-step multi-view generative model with score distillation. Then, a second-stage distillation is applied to address the challenge of view inconsistency in the multi-view generation. This two-stage process ensures a balanced approach to 3D generation, optimizing both quality and efficiency. Our comprehensive experiments demonstrate that GECO achieves high-quality image-to-3D mesh generation with an unprecedented level of efficiency. We will make the code and model publicly available.