# Sensing Surface Patches in Volume Rendering for Inferring Signed Distance Functions

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2412.16467 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2412.16467/

## Key facts

- Cited by 2 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 40 of its 54 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 21 Dec 2024.

## Builds on (most cited first, 30 of 40)

- [Instant Neural Graphics Primitives with a Multiresolution Hash Encoding](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2201.05989/) (2022)
- [ScanNet: Richly-annotated 3D Reconstructions of Indoor Scenes](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1702.04405/) (2017)
- [Occupancy Networks: Learning 3D Reconstruction in Function Space](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1812.03828/) (2018)
- [NeuS: Learning Neural Implicit Surfaces by Volume Rendering for Multi-view Reconstruction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2106.10689/) (2021)
- [2D Gaussian Splatting for Geometrically Accurate Radiance Fields](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.17888/) (2024)
- [Volume Rendering of Neural Implicit Surfaces](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2106.12052/) (2021)
- [The Replica Dataset: A Digital Replica of Indoor Spaces](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1906.05797/) (2019)
- [MVSNet: Depth Inference for Unstructured Multi-view Stereo](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1804.02505/) (2018)
- [Differentiable Volumetric Rendering: Learning Implicit 3D Representations without 3D Supervision](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1912.07372/) (2019)
- [DROID-SLAM: Deep Visual SLAM for Monocular, Stereo, and RGB-D Cameras](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2108.10869/) (2021)
- [UNISURF: Unifying Neural Implicit Surfaces and Radiance Fields for Multi-View Reconstruction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2104.10078/) (2021)
- [SuGaR: Surface-Aligned Gaussian Splatting for Efficient 3D Mesh Reconstruction and High-Quality Mesh Rendering](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.12775/) (2023)
- [NICE-SLAM: Neural Implicit Scalable Encoding for SLAM](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2112.12130/) (2021)
- [Neuralangelo: High-Fidelity Neural Surface Reconstruction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2306.03092/) (2023)
- [Neural Geometric Level of Detail: Real-time Rendering with Implicit 3D Shapes](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2101.10994/) (2021)
- [Omnidata: A Scalable Pipeline for Making Multi-Task Mid-Level Vision Datasets from 3D Scans](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2110.04994/) (2021)
- [Geo-Neus: Geometry-Consistent Neural Implicit Surfaces Learning for Multi-view Reconstruction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2205.15848/) (2022)
- [SnowflakeNet: Point Cloud Completion by Snowflake Point Deconvolution with Skip-Transformer](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2108.04444/) (2021)
- [NICER-SLAM: Neural Implicit Scene Encoding for RGB SLAM](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2302.03594/) (2023)
- [SDFDiff: Differentiable Rendering of Signed Distance Fields for 3D Shape Optimization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1912.07109/) (2019)
- [Neural-Pull: Learning Signed Distance Functions from Point Clouds by Learning to Pull Space onto Surfaces](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2011.13495/) (2020)
- [NeuRIS: Neural Reconstruction of Indoor Scenes Using Normal Priors](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2206.13597/) (2022)
- [Neural 3D Scene Reconstruction with the Manhattan-world Assumption](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2205.02836/) (2022)
- [HF-NeuS: Improved Surface Reconstruction Using High-Frequency Details](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2206.07850/) (2022)
- [DiGS : Divergence guided shape implicit neural representation for unoriented point clouds](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2106.10811/) (2021)
- [Deep Implicit Moving Least-Squares Functions for 3D Reconstruction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.12266/) (2021)
- [Reconstructing Surfaces for Sparse Point Clouds with On-Surface Priors](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2204.10603/) (2022)
- [SA-ConvONet: Sign-Agnostic Optimization of Convolutional Occupancy Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2105.03582/) (2021)
- [Neural Signed Distance Function Inference through Splatting 3D Gaussians Pulled on Zero-Level Set](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.14189/) (2024)
- [Towards Better Gradient Consistency for Neural Signed Distance Functions via Level Set Alignment](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.11601/) (2023)

## Built on by (most cited first, 2 of 2)

- [NeRFPrior: Learning Neural Radiance Field as a Prior for Indoor Scene Reconstruction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.18361/) (2025)
- [SGAD-SLAM: Splatting Gaussians at Adjusted Depth for Better Radiance Fields in RGBD SLAM](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.21055/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

It is vital to recover 3D geometry from multi-view RGB images in many 3D computer vision tasks. The latest methods infer the geometry represented as a signed distance field by minimizing the rendering error on the field through volume rendering. However, it is still challenging to explicitly impose constraints on surfaces for inferring more geometry details due to the limited ability of sensing surfaces in volume rendering. To resolve this problem, we introduce a method to infer signed distance functions (SDFs) with a better sense of surfaces through volume rendering. Using the gradients and signed distances, we establish a small surface patch centered at the estimated intersection along a ray by pulling points randomly sampled nearby. Hence, we are able to explicitly impose surface constraints on the sensed surface patch, such as multi-view photo consistency and supervision from depth or normal priors, through volume rendering. We evaluate our method by numerical and visual comparisons on scene benchmarks. Our superiority over the latest methods justifies our effectiveness.