# Taming Video Diffusion Prior with Scene-Grounding Guidance for 3D Gaussian Splatting from Sparse Inputs

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2503.05082 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.05082/

## Key facts

- Cited by 29 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 63 of its 69 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 7 Mar 2025.

## 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 63)

- [Learning Transferable Visual Models From Natural Language Supervision](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.00020/) (2021)
- [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)
- [Denoising Diffusion Implicit Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2010.02502/) (2020)
- [Diffusion Models Beat GANs on Image Synthesis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2105.05233/) (2021)
- [3D Gaussian Splatting for Real-Time Radiance Field Rendering](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2308.04079/) (2023)
- [Adding Conditional Control to Text-to-Image Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2302.05543/) (2023)
- [Generative Modeling by Estimating Gradients of the Data Distribution](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1907.05600/) (2019)
- [Instant Neural Graphics Primitives with a Multiresolution Hash Encoding](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2201.05989/) (2022)
- [DreamFusion: Text-to-3D using 2D Diffusion](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2209.14988/) (2022)
- [Perceptual Losses for Real-Time Style Transfer and Super-Resolution](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1603.08155/) (2016)
- [Mip-NeRF 360: Unbounded Anti-Aliased Neural Radiance Fields](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2111.12077/) (2021)
- [Mip-NeRF: A Multiscale Representation for Anti-Aliasing Neural Radiance Fields](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.13415/) (2021)
- [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)
- [DUSt3R: Geometric 3D Vision Made Easy](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.14132/) (2023)
- [T2I-Adapter: Learning Adapters to Dig out More Controllable Ability for Text-to-Image Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2302.08453/) (2023)
- [Magic3D: High-Resolution Text-to-3D Content Creation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2211.10440/) (2022)
- [NeRF in the Wild: Neural Radiance Fields for Unconstrained Photo Collections](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2008.02268/) (2020)
- [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)
- [The Replica Dataset: A Digital Replica of Indoor Spaces](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1906.05797/) (2019)
- [NeRF++: Analyzing and Improving Neural Radiance Fields](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2010.07492/) (2020)
- [ScanNet++: A High-Fidelity Dataset of 3D Indoor Scenes](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2308.11417/) (2023)
- [MVSNeRF: Fast Generalizable Radiance Field Reconstruction from Multi-View Stereo](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.15595/) (2021)
- [Resolution-robust Large Mask Inpainting with Fourier Convolutions](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2109.07161/) (2021)
- [Scaffold-GS: Structured 3D Gaussians for View-Adaptive Rendering](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.00109/) (2023)
- [pixelSplat: 3D Gaussian Splats from Image Pairs for Scalable Generalizable 3D Reconstruction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.12337/) (2023)
- [Local Light Field Fusion: Practical View Synthesis with Prescriptive Sampling Guidelines](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1905.00889/) (2019)

## Built on by (most cited first, 29 of 29)

- [A Survey on 3D Gaussian Splatting Applications: Segmentation, Editing, and Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2508.09977/) (2025)
- [GSFix3D: Diffusion-Guided Repair of Novel Views in Gaussian Splatting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2508.14717/) (2025)
- [Quantifying and Alleviating Co-Adaptation in Sparse-View 3D Gaussian Splatting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2508.12720/) (2025)
- [G4Splat: Geometry-Guided Gaussian Splatting with Generative Prior](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2510.12099/) (2025)
- [AnchorSplat: Feed-Forward 3D Gaussian Splatting with 3D Geometric Priors](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2604.07053/) (2026)
- [GaussFusion: Improving 3D Reconstruction in the Wild with A Geometry-Informed Video Generator](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.25053/) (2026)
- [Sparse-View 3D Reconstruction: Recent Advances and Open Challenges](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2507.16406/) (2025)
- [Novel View Synthesis from A Few Glimpses via Test-Time Natural Video Completion](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2511.17932/) (2025)
- [GaMO: Geometry-aware Multi-view Diffusion Outpainting for Sparse-View 3D Reconstruction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2512.25073/) (2025)
- [SparseGS-W: Sparse-View 3D Gaussian Splatting in the Wild with Generative Priors](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.19452/) (2025)
- [Breaking the Vicious Cycle: Coherent 3D Gaussian Splatting from Sparse and Motion-Blurred Views](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2512.10369/) (2025)
- [CloseUpShot: Close-up Novel View Synthesis from Sparse-views via Point-conditioned Diffusion Model](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2511.13121/) (2025)
- [AHOY! Animatable Humans under Occlusion from YouTube Videos with Gaussian Splatting and Video Diffusion Priors](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.17975/) (2026)
- [Benchmarking PhD-Level Coding in 3D Geometric Computer Vision](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.30038/) (2026)
- [Egosurg: Arbitrary view synthesis for egocentric replay of operating room workflows from ambient cameras](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2510.04802/) (2025)
- [Pseudo-View Enhancement via Confidence Fusion for Unposed Sparse-View Reconstruction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2602.21535/) (2026)
- [Sparse-to-Complete: From Sparse Image Captures to Complete 3D Scenes](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2605.05664/) (2026)
- [VidSplat: Gaussian Splatting Reconstruction with Geometry-Guided Video Diffusion Priors](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2605.11424/) (2026)
- [R2S-EGO: Dual-Proxy Refinement for Sparse-Capture Real-to-Sim](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2608.06827/) (2026)
- [WildGHand: Learning Anti-Perturbation Gaussian Hand Avatars from Monocular In-the-Wild Videos](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2602.20556/) (2026)
- [Catalyst4D: High-Fidelity 3D-to-4D Scene Editing via Dynamic Propagation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.12766/) (2026)
- [Leveling3D: Leveling Up 3D Reconstruction with Feed-Forward 3D Gaussian Splatting and Geometry-Aware Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.16211/) (2026)
- [PanoPlane: Plane-Aware Panoramic Completion for Sparse-View Indoor 3D Gaussian Splatting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2605.14135/) (2026)
- [Generator-Refiner-Examiner: A Tri-Module Data Augmentation Framework for 3D Human Avatar Learning from Monocular Videos](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2605.23555/) (2026)
- [Improving Sparse-View 3DGS Generalization via Flat Minima Optimization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2607.00885/) (2026)
- [AsySplat: Efficient Asymmetric 3D Gaussian Splatting for Long-Sequence Scene Modeling](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2607.10995/) (2026)
- [Rethinking 3D Noise: Learning 3D-Aware Video Priors via Optimization-Free Morphological Perturbations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2609.03657/) (2026)
- [Filling the Unseen: Scene Extrapolation via 3D Gaussian Splatting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2609.13262/) (2026)
- [Bi-FlowGS: Bridging Generative View Completion and Gaussian Geometry through Bidirectional Flow Co-Refinement](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2609.17039/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Despite recent successes in novel view synthesis using 3D Gaussian Splatting (3DGS), modeling scenes with sparse inputs remains a challenge. In this work, we address two critical yet overlooked issues in real-world sparse-input modeling: extrapolation and occlusion. To tackle these issues, we propose to use a reconstruction by generation pipeline that leverages learned priors from video diffusion models to provide plausible interpretations for regions outside the field of view or occluded. However, the generated sequences exhibit inconsistencies that do not fully benefit subsequent 3DGS modeling. To address the challenge of inconsistencies, we introduce a novel scene-grounding guidance based on rendered sequences from an optimized 3DGS, which tames the diffusion model to generate consistent sequences. This guidance is training-free and does not require any fine-tuning of the diffusion model. To facilitate holistic scene modeling, we also propose a trajectory initialization method. It effectively identifies regions that are outside the field of view and occluded. We further design a scheme tailored for 3DGS optimization with generated sequences. Experiments demonstrate that our method significantly improves upon the baseline and achieves state-of-the-art performance on challenging benchmarks.