# FreeSplatter: Pose-free Gaussian Splatting for Sparse-view 3D Reconstruction

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2412.09573 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2412.09573/

## Key facts

- Cited by 41 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 58 of its 79 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 12 Dec 2024.

## Builds on (most cited first, 30 of 58)

- [Deep Residual Learning for Image Recognition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1512.03385/) (2015)
- [An Image is Worth 16x16 Words: Transformers for Image Recognition at Scale](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2010.11929/) (2020)
- [3D Gaussian Splatting for Real-Time Radiance Field Rendering](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2308.04079/) (2023)
- [DUSt3R: Geometric 3D Vision Made Easy](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.14132/) (2023)
- [Objaverse: A Universe of Annotated 3D Objects](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2212.08051/) (2022)
- [SuperGlue: Learning Feature Matching with Graph Neural Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1911.11763/) (2019)
- [SuperPoint: Self-Supervised Interest Point Detection and Description](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1712.07629/) (2017)
- [Efficient Geometry-aware 3D Generative Adversarial Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2112.07945/) (2021)
- [Mixed Precision Training](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1710.03740/) (2017)
- [Grounding Image Matching in 3D with MASt3R](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.09756/) (2024)
- [LRM: Large Reconstruction Model for Single Image to 3D](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.04400/) (2023)
- [Training Deep Nets with Sublinear Memory Cost](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1604.06174/) (2016)
- [Objaverse-XL: A Universe of 10M+ 3D Objects](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2307.05663/) (2023)
- [LGM: Large Multi-View Gaussian Model for High-Resolution 3D Content Creation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2402.05054/) (2024)
- [pixelSplat: 3D Gaussian Splats from Image Pairs for Scalable Generalizable 3D Reconstruction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.12337/) (2023)
- [Common Objects in 3D: Large-Scale Learning and Evaluation of Real-life 3D Category Reconstruction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2109.00512/) (2021)
- [BARF: Bundle-Adjusting Neural Radiance Fields](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2104.06405/) (2021)
- [Google Scanned Objects: A High-Quality Dataset of 3D Scanned Household Items](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2204.11918/) (2022)
- [LightGlue: Local Feature Matching at Light Speed](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2306.13643/) (2023)
- [MVSplat: Efficient 3D Gaussian Splatting from Sparse Multi-View Images](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.14627/) (2024)
- [Zero123++: a Single Image to Consistent Multi-view Diffusion Base Model](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2310.15110/) (2023)
- [BlendedMVS: A Large-scale Dataset for Generalized Multi-view Stereo Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1911.10127/) (2019)
- [InstantMesh: Efficient 3D Mesh Generation from a Single Image with Sparse-view Large Reconstruction Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.07191/) (2024)
- [Instant3D: Fast Text-to-3D with Sparse-View Generation and Large Reconstruction Model](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.06214/) (2023)
- [ABO: Dataset and Benchmarks for Real-World 3D Object Understanding](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2110.06199/) (2021)
- [Splatter Image: Ultra-Fast Single-View 3D Reconstruction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.13150/) (2023)
- [GS-LRM: Large Reconstruction Model for 3D Gaussian Splatting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.19702/) (2024)
- [D2-Net: A Trainable CNN for Joint Detection and Description of Local Features](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1905.03561/) (2019)
- [OmniObject3D: Large-Vocabulary 3D Object Dataset for Realistic Perception, Reconstruction and Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2301.07525/) (2023)
- [RoMa: Robust Dense Feature Matching](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.15404/) (2023)

## Built on by (most cited first, 30 of 41)

- [STream3R: Scalable Sequential 3D Reconstruction with Causal Transformer](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2508.10893/) (2025)
- [ReconViaGen: Towards Accurate Multi-view 3D Object Reconstruction via Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2510.23306/) (2025)
- [Advances in Feed-Forward 3D Reconstruction and View Synthesis: A Survey](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2507.14501/) (2025)
- [LongStream: Long-Sequence Streaming Autoregressive Visual Geometry](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2602.13172/) (2026)
- [AMB3R: Accurate Feed-forward Metric-scale 3D Reconstruction with Backend](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2511.20343/) (2025)
- [A Survey on 3D Gaussian Splatting Applications: Segmentation, Editing, and Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2508.09977/) (2025)
- [Unposed 3DGS Reconstruction with Probabilistic Procrustes Mapping](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2507.18541/) (2025)
- [PanoSplatt3R: Leveraging Perspective Pretraining for Generalized Unposed Wide-Baseline Panorama Reconstruction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2507.21960/) (2025)
- [CUPID: Generative 3D Reconstruction via Joint Object and Pose Modeling](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2510.20776/) (2025)
- [ActiveInitSplat: How Active Image Selection Helps Gaussian Splatting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.06859/) (2025)
- [GENA3D: Generative Amodal 3D Modeling by Bridging 2D Priors and 3D Coherence](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2511.21945/) (2025)
- [Sparse-View 3D Reconstruction: Recent Advances and Open Challenges](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2507.16406/) (2025)
- [UFV-Splatter: Pose-Free Feed-Forward 3D Gaussian Splatting Adapted to Unfavorable Views](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2507.22342/) (2025)
- [GaMO: Geometry-aware Multi-view Diffusion Outpainting for Sparse-View 3D Reconstruction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2512.25073/) (2025)
- [Mix3R: Mixing Feed-forward Reconstruction and Generative 3D Priors for Joint Multi-view Aligned 3D Reconstruction and Pose Estimation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2605.03359/) (2026)
- [Meshy T2: Fast Native Mesh Generation with Flow Matching](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2607.28675/) (2026)
- [SatSurfGS: Generalizable 2D Gaussian Splatting for Sparse-View Satellite Surface Reconstruction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2605.07181/) (2026)
- [TriSplat: Simulation-Ready Feed-Forward 3D Scene Reconstruction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2605.26115/) (2026)
- [QuerySplat: Decoupling Geometry and Appearance Representations in 3DGS Prediction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2608.01186/) (2026)
- [OnlineSplatter: Pose-Free Online 3D Reconstruction for Free-Moving Objects](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2510.20605/) (2025)
- [RnG: A Unified Transformer for Complete 3D Modeling from Partial Observations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.01194/) (2026)
- [MeshWeaver: Sparse-Voxel-Guided Surface Weaving for Autoregressive Mesh Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2606.04688/) (2026)
- [Learning Fine-Grained Geometry for Sparse-View Splatting via Cascade Depth Loss](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.22279/) (2025)
- [PAOLI: Pose-free Articulated Object Learning from Sparse-view Images](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2509.04276/) (2025)
- [DeblurSplat: SfM-free 3D Gaussian Splatting with Event Camera for Robust Deblurring](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2509.18898/) (2025)
- [VG2GT: Voxel-Gaussian Splatting Visual Geometry Grounded Transformer](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2606.01573/) (2026)
- [MAC-Splat: Multi-Attribute Consistency for High-Fidelity Sparse-View Reconstruction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2607.10792/) (2026)
- [ASV3D: Adapting Diffusion-Based Single-View 3D Reconstruction with Extra Imagery](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2608.08132/) (2026)
- [ResemBrick: Brick Reconstruction from Photographs with Perceptual Fidelity and Buildability](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2608.09597/) (2026)
- [FSFSplatter: Build Surface and Novel Views with Sparse-Views within 2min](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2510.02691/) (2025)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Sparse-view reconstruction models typically require precise camera poses, yet obtaining these parameters from sparse-view images remains challenging. We introduce FreeSplatter, a scalable feed-forward framework that generates high-quality 3D Gaussians from uncalibrated sparse-view images while estimating camera parameters within seconds. Our approach employs a streamlined transformer architecture where self-attention blocks facilitate information exchange among multi-view image tokens, decoding them into pixel-aligned 3D Gaussian primitives within a unified reference frame. This representation enables both high-fidelity 3D modeling and efficient camera parameter estimation using off-the-shelf solvers. We develop two specialized variants--for object-centric and scene-level reconstruction--trained on comprehensive datasets. Remarkably, FreeSplatter outperforms several pose-dependent Large Reconstruction Models (LRMs) by a notable margin while achieving comparable or even better pose estimation accuracy compared to state-of-the-art pose-free reconstruction approach MASt3R in challenging benchmarks. Beyond technical benchmarks, FreeSplatter streamlines text/image-to-3D content creation pipelines, eliminating the complexity of camera pose management while delivering exceptional visual fidelity.