# A Recipe for Generating 3D Worlds From a Single Image

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2503.16611 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.16611/

## Key facts

- Cited by 13 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 49 of its 60 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 20 Mar 2025.

## Builds on (most cited first, 30 of 49)

- [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)
- [LoRA: Low-Rank Adaptation of Large Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2106.09685/) (2021)
- [Score-Based Generative Modeling through Stochastic Differential Equations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2011.13456/) (2020)
- [Diffusion Models Beat GANs on Image Synthesis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2105.05233/) (2021)
- [Deep Unsupervised Learning using Nonequilibrium Thermodynamics](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1503.03585/) (2015)
- [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)
- [SDXL: Improving Latent Diffusion Models for High-Resolution Image Synthesis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2307.01952/) (2023)
- [Scaling Rectified Flow Transformers for High-Resolution Image Synthesis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.03206/) (2024)
- [Improved Denoising Diffusion Probabilistic Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2102.09672/) (2021)
- [CLIPScore: A Reference-free Evaluation Metric for Image Captioning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2104.08718/) (2021)
- [Imagen Video: High Definition Video Generation with Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2210.02303/) (2022)
- [Make-A-Video: Text-to-Video Generation without Text-Video Data](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2209.14792/) (2022)
- [DUSt3R: Geometric 3D Vision Made Easy](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.14132/) (2023)
- [IP-Adapter: Text Compatible Image Prompt Adapter for Text-to-Image Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2308.06721/) (2023)
- [Cascaded Diffusion Models for High Fidelity Image Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2106.15282/) (2021)
- [ScanNet++: A High-Fidelity Dataset of 3D Indoor Scenes](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2308.11417/) (2023)
- [Nerfstudio: A Modular Framework for Neural Radiance Field Development](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2302.04264/) (2023)
- [Structure and Content-Guided Video Synthesis with Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2302.03011/) (2023)
- [Continuous 3D Perception Model with Persistent State](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2501.12387/) (2025)
- [DL3DV-10K: A Large-Scale Scene Dataset for Deep Learning-based 3D Vision](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.16256/) (2023)
- [Q-Align: Teaching LMMs for Visual Scoring via Discrete Text-Defined Levels](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.17090/) (2023)
- [Florence-2: Advancing a Unified Representation for a Variety of Vision Tasks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.06242/) (2023)
- [ViewCrafter: Taming Video Diffusion Models for High-fidelity Novel View Synthesis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2409.02048/) (2024)
- [Metric3Dv2: A Versatile Monocular Geometric Foundation Model for Zero-shot Metric Depth and Surface Normal Estimation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.15506/) (2024)
- [VideoFusion: Decomposed Diffusion Models for High-Quality Video Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.08320/) (2023)
- [MoGe: Unlocking Accurate Monocular Geometry Estimation for Open-Domain Images with Optimal Training Supervision](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.19115/) (2024)
- [LucidDreamer: Towards High-Fidelity Text-to-3D Generation via Interval Score Matching](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.11284/) (2023)
- [Visual Prompting via Image Inpainting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2209.00647/) (2022)

## Built on by (most cited first, 13 of 13)

- [Voyager: Long-Range and World-Consistent Video Diffusion for Explorable 3D Scene Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2506.04225/) (2025)
- [HunyuanWorld 1.0: Generating Immersive, Explorable, and Interactive 3D Worlds from Words or Pixels](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2507.21809/) (2025)
- [Gen3R: 3D Scene Generation Meets Feed-Forward Reconstruction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2601.04090/) (2026)
- [WorldExplorer: Towards Generating Fully Navigable 3D Scenes](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2506.01799/) (2025)
- [Sharp Monocular View Synthesis in Less Than a Second](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2512.10685/) (2025)
- [360Anything: Geometry-Free Lifting of Images and Videos to 360deg](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2601.16192/) (2026)
- [OmniX: From Unified Panoramic Generation and Perception to Graphics-Ready 3D Scenes](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2510.26800/) (2025)
- [Perspective-Aware AI in Extended Reality](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2507.11479/) (2025)
- [OneWorld: Taming Scene Generation with 3D Unified Representation Autoencoder](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.16099/) (2026)
- [WorldAct: Activating Monolithic 3D Worlds into Interactive-Ready Object-Centric Scenes](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2605.15843/) (2026)
- [SphericalDreamer: Generating Navigable Immersive 3D Worlds with Panorama Fusion](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2605.19974/) (2026)
- [PrITTI: Primitive-based Generation of Controllable and Editable 3D Semantic Urban Scenes](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2506.19117/) (2025)
- [Stepper: Stepwise Immersive Scene Generation with Multiview Panoramas](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.28980/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

We introduce a recipe for generating immersive 3D worlds from a single image by framing the task as an in-context learning problem for 2D inpainting models. This approach requires minimal training and uses existing generative models. Our process involves two steps: generating coherent panoramas using a pre-trained diffusion model and lifting these into 3D with a metric depth estimator. We then fill unobserved regions by conditioning the inpainting model on rendered point clouds, requiring minimal fine-tuning. Tested on both synthetic and real images, our method produces high-quality 3D environments suitable for VR display. By explicitly modeling the 3D structure of the generated environment from the start, our approach consistently outperforms state-of-the-art, video synthesis-based methods along multiple quantitative image quality metrics. Project Page: https://katjaschwarz.github.io/worlds/