# GIC: Gaussian-Informed Continuum for Physical Property Identification and Simulation

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2406.14927 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.14927/

## Key facts

- Cited by 49 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 50 of its 75 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 21 Jun 2024.

## Builds on (most cited first, 30 of 50)

- [GPT-4 Technical Report](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.08774/) (2023)
- [Segment Anything](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2304.02643/) (2023)
- [3D Gaussian Splatting for Real-Time Radiance Field Rendering](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2308.04079/) (2023)
- [NeuS: Learning Neural Implicit Surfaces by Volume Rendering for Multi-view Reconstruction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2106.10689/) (2021)
- [D-NeRF: Neural Radiance Fields for Dynamic Scenes](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2011.13961/) (2020)
- [4D Gaussian Splatting for Real-Time Dynamic Scene Rendering](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2310.08528/) (2023)
- [Isaac Gym: High Performance GPU-Based Physics Simulation For Robot Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2108.10470/) (2021)
- [Direct Voxel Grid Optimization: Super-fast Convergence for Radiance Fields Reconstruction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2111.11215/) (2021)
- [Deformable 3D Gaussians for High-Fidelity Monocular Dynamic Scene Reconstruction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2309.13101/) (2023)
- [K-Planes: Explicit Radiance Fields in Space, Time, and Appearance](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2301.10241/) (2023)
- [LGM: Large Multi-View Gaussian Model for High-Resolution 3D Content Creation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2402.05054/) (2024)
- [Dynamic 3D Gaussians: Tracking by Persistent Dynamic View Synthesis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2308.09713/) (2023)
- [HexPlane: A Fast Representation for Dynamic Scenes](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2301.09632/) (2023)
- [Non-Rigid Neural Radiance Fields: Reconstruction and Novel View Synthesis of a Dynamic Scene From Monocular Video](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2012.12247/) (2020)
- [InstantMesh: Efficient 3D Mesh Generation from a Single Image with Sparse-view Large Reconstruction Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.07191/) (2024)
- [INeRF: Inverting Neural Radiance Fields for Pose Estimation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2012.05877/) (2020)
- [PhysGaussian: Physics-Integrated 3D Gaussians for Generative Dynamics](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.12198/) (2023)
- [Fast Dynamic Radiance Fields with Time-Aware Neural Voxels](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2205.15285/) (2022)
- [NeuS2: Fast Learning of Neural Implicit Surfaces for Multi-view Reconstruction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2212.05231/) (2022)
- [TripoSR: Fast 3D Object Reconstruction from a Single Image](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.02151/) (2024)
- [Tensor4D : Efficient Neural 4D Decomposition for High-fidelity Dynamic Reconstruction and Rendering](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2211.11610/) (2022)
- [CRM: Single Image to 3D Textured Mesh with Convolutional Reconstruction Model](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.05034/) (2024)
- [Gaussian-Flow: 4D Reconstruction with Dynamic 3D Gaussian Particle](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.03431/) (2023)
- [COLMAP-Free 3D Gaussian Splatting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.07504/) (2023)
- [Real-Time High-Resolution Background Matting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2012.07810/) (2020)
- [PAC-NeRF: Physics Augmented Continuum Neural Radiance Fields for Geometry-Agnostic System Identification](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.05512/) (2023)
- [Gaussian-SLAM: Photo-realistic Dense SLAM with Gaussian Splatting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.10070/) (2023)
- [NeuSG: Neural Implicit Surface Reconstruction with 3D Gaussian Splatting Guidance](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.00846/) (2023)
- [DynMF: Neural Motion Factorization for Real-time Dynamic View Synthesis with 3D Gaussian Splatting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.00112/) (2023)
- [gradSim: Differentiable simulation for system identification and visuomotor control](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2104.02646/) (2021)

## Built on by (most cited first, 30 of 49)

- [PhysMotion: Physics-Grounded Dynamics From a Single Image](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2411.17189/) (2024)
- [PhysFlow: Unleashing the Potential of Multi-modal Foundation Models and Video Diffusion for 4D Dynamic Physical Scene Simulation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2411.14423/) (2024)
- [Generative Physical AI in Vision: A Survey](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2501.10928/) (2025)
- [Phys4DGen: Physics-Compliant 4D Generation with Multi-Material Composition Perception](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2411.16800/) (2024)
- [GaussianProperty: Integrating Physical Properties to 3D Gaussians with LMMs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2412.11258/) (2024)
- [Vid2Sim: Generalizable, Video-based Reconstruction of Appearance, Geometry and Physics for Mesh-free Simulation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2506.06440/) (2025)
- [DecoupledGaussian: Object-Scene Decoupling for Physics-Based Interaction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.05484/) (2025)
- [PAT3D: Physics-Augmented Text-to-3D Scene Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2511.21978/) (2025)
- [FreeGave: 3D Physics Learning from Dynamic Videos by Gaussian Velocity](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2506.07865/) (2025)
- [Grounding Creativity in Physics: A Brief Survey of Physical Priors in AIGC](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2502.07007/) (2025)
- [PhysGM: Large Physical Gaussian Model for Feed-Forward 4D Synthesis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2508.13911/) (2025)
- [PhysWorld: From Real Videos to World Models of Deformable Objects via Physics-Aware Demonstration Synthesis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2510.21447/) (2025)
- [MASIV: Toward Material-Agnostic System Identification from Videos](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2508.01112/) (2025)
- [PhysInOne: Visual Physics Learning and Reasoning in One Suite](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2604.09415/) (2026)
- [MPMAvatar: Learning 3D Gaussian Avatars with Accurate and Robust Physics-Based Dynamics](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2510.01619/) (2025)
- [Seeing the Wind from a Falling Leaf](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2512.00762/) (2025)
- [MVInverse: Feed-forward Multi-view Inverse Rendering in Seconds](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2512.21003/) (2025)
- [MOSIV: Multi-Object System Identification from Videos](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.06022/) (2026)
- [PhyMAGIC: Physical Motion-Aware Generative Inference with Confidence-guided LLM](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.16456/) (2025)
- [ParticleGS: Learning Neural Gaussian Particle Dynamics from Videos for Prior-free Physical Motion Extrapolation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.20270/) (2025)
- [PhysGaia: A Physics-Aware Benchmark with Multi-Body Interactions for Dynamic Novel View Synthesis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2506.02794/) (2025)
- [ProJo4D: Progressive Joint Optimization for Sparse-View Inverse Physics Estimation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2506.05317/) (2025)
- [Gaussian-Augmented Physics Simulation and System Identification with Complex Colliders](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2511.06846/) (2025)
- [VisionLaw: Inferring Interpretable Intrinsic Dynamics from Visual Observations via Bilevel Optimization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2508.13792/) (2025)
- [i-PhysGaussian: Implicit Physical Simulation for 3D Gaussian Splatting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2602.17117/) (2026)
- [DiffWind: Physics-Informed Differentiable Modeling of Wind-Driven Object Dynamics](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.09668/) (2026)
- [MonoPhysics: Estimating Geometry, Appearance, and Physical Parameters from Monocular Videos](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2605.30320/) (2026)
- [NeuROK: Generative 4D Neural Object Kinematics](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2605.30347/) (2026)
- [MotionPhysics: Learnable Motion Distillation for Text-Guided Simulation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2601.00504/) (2026)
- [FieryGS: In-the-Wild Fire Synthesis with Physics-Integrated Gaussian Splatting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2605.00177/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

This paper studies the problem of estimating physical properties (system identification) through visual observations. To facilitate geometry-aware guidance in physical property estimation, we introduce a novel hybrid framework that leverages 3D Gaussian representation to not only capture explicit shapes but also enable the simulated continuum to render object masks as 2D shape surrogates during training. We propose a new dynamic 3D Gaussian framework based on motion factorization to recover the object as 3D Gaussian point sets across different time states. Furthermore, we develop a coarse-to-fine filling strategy to generate the density fields of the object from the Gaussian reconstruction, allowing for the extraction of object continuums along with their surfaces and the integration of Gaussian attributes into these continuum. In addition to the extracted object surfaces, the Gaussian-informed continuum also enables the rendering of object masks during simulations, serving as 2D-shape guidance for physical property estimation. Extensive experimental evaluations demonstrate that our pipeline achieves state-of-the-art performance across multiple benchmarks and metrics. Additionally, we illustrate the effectiveness of the proposed method through real-world demonstrations, showcasing its practical utility. Our project page is at https://jukgei.github.io/project/gic.