# Dora: Sampling and Benchmarking for 3D Shape Variational Auto-Encoders

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2412.17808 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2412.17808/

## Key facts

- Cited by 98 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Placed in 3D, point cloud and scene generation, one of 14 directions in Diffusion models.
- Builds on 55 of its 65 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 23 Dec 2024.

## Placed in

- Diffusion models / [3D, point cloud and scene generation](https://mlsanity.com/diffusion/3d-point-cloud-and-scene-generation/)

## Builds on (most cited first, 30 of 55)

- [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)
- [3D Gaussian Splatting for Real-Time Radiance Field Rendering](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2308.04079/) (2023)
- [Scalable Diffusion Models with Transformers](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2212.09748/) (2022)
- [Adding Conditional Control to Text-to-Image Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2302.05543/) (2023)
- [DreamFusion: Text-to-3D using 2D Diffusion](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2209.14988/) (2022)
- [ShapeNet: An Information-Rich 3D Model Repository](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1512.03012/) (2015)
- [FlashAttention-2: Faster Attention with Better Parallelism and Work Partitioning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2307.08691/) (2023)
- [Objaverse: A Universe of Annotated 3D Objects](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2212.08051/) (2022)
- [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)
- [MVDream: Multi-view Diffusion for 3D Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2308.16512/) (2023)
- [PixArt-α: Fast Training of Diffusion Transformer for Photorealistic Text-to-Image Synthesis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2310.00426/) (2023)
- [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)
- [DreamGaussian: Generative Gaussian Splatting for Efficient 3D Content Creation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2309.16653/) (2023)
- [LGM: Large Multi-View Gaussian Model for High-Resolution 3D Content Creation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2402.05054/) (2024)
- [Fantasia3D: Disentangling Geometry and Appearance for High-quality Text-to-3D Content Creation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.13873/) (2023)
- [SyncDreamer: Generating Multiview-consistent Images from a Single-view Image](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2309.03453/) (2023)
- [Google Scanned Objects: A High-Quality Dataset of 3D Scanned Household Items](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2204.11918/) (2022)
- [One-2-3-45: Any Single Image to 3D Mesh in 45 Seconds without Per-Shape Optimization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2306.16928/) (2023)
- [Deep Marching Tetrahedra: a Hybrid Representation for High-Resolution 3D Shape Synthesis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2111.04276/) (2021)
- [3DShape2VecSet: A 3D Shape Representation for Neural Fields and Generative Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2301.11445/) (2023)
- [CLAY: A Controllable Large-scale Generative Model for Creating High-quality 3D Assets](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.13897/) (2024)
- [Modular Primitives for High-Performance Differentiable Rendering](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2011.03277/) (2020)
- [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)
- [Rodin: A Generative Model for Sculpting 3D Digital Avatars Using Diffusion](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2212.06135/) (2022)
- [LucidDreamer: Towards High-Fidelity Text-to-3D Generation via Interval Score Matching](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.11284/) (2023)

## Built on by (most cited first, 30 of 98)

- [Hunyuan3D 2.0: Scaling Diffusion Models for High Resolution Textured 3D Assets Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2501.12202/) (2025)
- [Native and Compact Structured Latents for 3D Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2512.14692/) (2025)
- [Hunyuan3D 2.1: From Images to High-Fidelity 3D Assets with Production-Ready PBR Material](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2506.15442/) (2025)
- [Direct3D-S2: Gigascale 3D Generation Made Easy with Spatial Sparse Attention](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.17412/) (2025)
- [Hi3DGen: High-fidelity 3D Geometry Generation from Images via Normal Bridging](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.22236/) (2025)
- [Sparc3D: Sparse Representation and Construction for High-Resolution 3D Shapes Modeling](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.14521/) (2025)
- [Step1X-3D: Towards High-Fidelity and Controllable Generation of Textured 3D Assets](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.07747/) (2025)
- [PartCrafter: Structured 3D Mesh Generation via Compositional Latent Diffusion Transformers](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2506.05573/) (2025)
- [SparseFlex: High-Resolution and Arbitrary-Topology 3D Shape Modeling](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.21732/) (2025)
- [DeepMesh: Auto-Regressive Artist-mesh Creation with Reinforcement Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.15265/) (2025)
- [Efficient Part-level 3D Object Generation via Dual Volume Packing](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2506.09980/) (2025)
- [X-Part: high fidelity and structure coherent shape decomposition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2509.08643/) (2025)
- [LATTICE: Democratize High-Fidelity 3D Generation at Scale](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2512.03052/) (2025)
- [AutoPartGen: Autogressive 3D Part Generation and Discovery](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2507.13346/) (2025)
- [ReconViaGen: Towards Accurate Multi-view 3D Object Reconstruction via Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2510.23306/) (2025)
- [Unleashing Vecset Diffusion Model for Fast Shape Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.16302/) (2025)
- [UniTEX: Universal High Fidelity Generative Texturing for 3D Shapes](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.23253/) (2025)
- [Particulate: Feed-Forward 3D Object Articulation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2512.11798/) (2025)
- [ShapeR: Robust Conditional 3D Shape Generation from Casual Captures](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2601.11514/) (2026)
- [Seed3D 1.0: From Images to High-Fidelity Simulation-Ready 3D Assets](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2510.19944/) (2025)
- [WorldGen: From Text to Traversable and Interactive 3D Worlds](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2511.16825/) (2025)
- [SceneMaker: Open-set 3D Scene Generation with Decoupled De-occlusion and Pose Estimation Model](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2512.10957/) (2025)
- [UltraShape 1.0: High-Fidelity 3D Shape Generation via Scalable Geometric Refinement](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2512.21185/) (2025)
- [ActionMesh: Animated 3D Mesh Generation with Temporal 3D Diffusion](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2601.16148/) (2026)
- [Efficient Autoregressive Shape Generation via Octree-Based Adaptive Tokenization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2504.02817/) (2025)
- [HY3D-Bench: Generation of 3D Assets](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2602.03907/) (2026)
- [Light of Normals: Unified Feature Representation for Universal Photometric Stereo](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2506.18882/) (2025)
- [SyncHuman: Synchronizing 2D and 3D Generative Models for Single-view Human Reconstruction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2510.07723/) (2025)
- [UniPart: Part-Level 3D Generation with Unified 3D Geom-Seg Latents](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2512.09435/) (2025)
- [Unified Cross-Scale 3D Generation and Understanding via Autoregressive Modeling](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.16278/) (2025)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Recent 3D content generation pipelines commonly employ Variational Autoencoders (VAEs) to encode shapes into compact latent representations for diffusion-based generation. However, the widely adopted uniform point sampling strategy in Shape VAE training often leads to a significant loss of geometric details, limiting the quality of shape reconstruction and downstream generation tasks. We present Dora-VAE, a novel approach that enhances VAE reconstruction through our proposed sharp edge sampling strategy and a dual cross-attention mechanism. By identifying and prioritizing regions with high geometric complexity during training, our method significantly improves the preservation of fine-grained shape features. Such sampling strategy and the dual attention mechanism enable the VAE to focus on crucial geometric details that are typically missed by uniform sampling approaches. To systematically evaluate VAE reconstruction quality, we additionally propose Dora-bench, a benchmark that quantifies shape complexity through the density of sharp edges, introducing a new metric focused on reconstruction accuracy at these salient geometric features. Extensive experiments on the Dora-bench demonstrate that Dora-VAE achieves comparable reconstruction quality to the state-of-the-art dense XCube-VAE while requiring a latent space at least 8× smaller (1,280 vs. > 10,000 codes).