# Global-Local Tree Search in VLMs for 3D Indoor Scene Generation

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2503.18476 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.18476/

## Key facts

- Cited by 29 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Placed in Embodied and 3D vision-language models, one of 16 directions in Multimodal LLMs / vision-language models.
- Builds on 35 of its 38 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 24 Mar 2025.

## Placed in

- Multimodal LLMs / vision-language models / [Embodied and 3D vision-language models](https://mlsanity.com/mllm/embodied-and-3d-vision-language-models/)

## Builds on (most cited first, 30 of 35)

- [Learning Transferable Visual Models From Natural Language Supervision](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.00020/) (2021)
- [Language Models are Few-Shot Learners](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2005.14165/) (2020)
- [Chain-of-Thought Prompting Elicits Reasoning in Large Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2201.11903/) (2022)
- [Sentence-BERT: Sentence Embeddings using Siamese BERT-Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1908.10084/) (2019)
- [Visual Instruction Tuning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2304.08485/) (2023)
- [PaLM: Scaling Language Modeling with Pathways](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2204.02311/) (2022)
- [LAION-5B: An open large-scale dataset for training next generation image-text models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2210.08402/) (2022)
- [Tree of Thoughts: Deliberate Problem Solving with Large Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.10601/) (2023)
- [DreamFusion: Text-to-3D using 2D Diffusion](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2209.14988/) (2022)
- [Qwen-VL: A Versatile Vision-Language Model for Understanding, Localization, Text Reading, and Beyond](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2308.12966/) (2023)
- [Objaverse: A Universe of Annotated 3D Objects](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2212.08051/) (2022)
- [GIRAFFE: Representing Scenes as Compositional Generative Neural Feature Fields](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2011.12100/) (2020)
- [Objaverse-XL: A Universe of 10M+ 3D Objects](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2307.05663/) (2023)
- [Fantasia3D: Disentangling Geometry and Appearance for High-quality Text-to-3D Content Creation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.13873/) (2023)
- [Towards Reasoning in Large Language Models: A Survey](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2212.10403/) (2022)
- [3D-FRONT: 3D Furnished Rooms with layOuts and semaNTics](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2011.09127/) (2020)
- [LayoutGPT: Compositional Visual Planning and Generation with Large Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.15393/) (2023)
- [3D-FUTURE: 3D Furniture shape with TextURE](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2009.09633/) (2020)
- [Holodeck: Language Guided Generation of 3D Embodied AI Environments](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.09067/) (2023)
- [Learning 3D Semantic Scene Graphs from 3D Indoor Reconstructions](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2004.03967/) (2020)
- [ATISS: Autoregressive Transformers for Indoor Scene Synthesis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2110.03675/) (2021)
- [BlockGAN: Learning 3D Object-aware Scene Representations from Unlabelled Images](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2002.08988/) (2020)
- [DiffuScene: Denoising Diffusion Models for Generative Indoor Scene Synthesis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.14207/) (2023)
- [SceneFormer: Indoor Scene Generation with Transformers](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2012.09793/) (2020)
- [PhyScene: Physically Interactable 3D Scene Synthesis for Embodied AI](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.09465/) (2024)
- [InstructScene: Instruction-Driven 3D Indoor Scene Synthesis with Semantic Graph Prior](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2402.04717/) (2024)
- [GALA3D: Towards Text-to-3D Complex Scene Generation via Layout-guided Generative Gaussian Splatting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2402.07207/) (2024)
- [Graph-to-3D: End-to-End Generation and Manipulation of 3D Scenes Using Scene Graphs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2108.08841/) (2021)
- [AnyHome: Open-Vocabulary Generation of Structured and Textured 3D Homes](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.06644/) (2023)
- [Attentive Relational Networks for Mapping Images to Scene Graphs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1811.10696/) (2018)

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

- [FlashWorld: High-quality 3D Scene Generation within Seconds](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2510.13678/) (2025)
- [Direct Numerical Layout Generation for 3D Indoor Scene Synthesis via Spatial Reasoning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2506.05341/) (2025)
- [HOLODECK 2.0: Vision-Language-Guided 3D World Generation with Editing](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2508.05899/) (2025)
- [Video Perception Models for 3D Scene Synthesis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2506.20601/) (2025)
- [DisCo-Layout: Disentangling and Coordinating Semantic and Physical Refinement in a Multi-Agent Framework for 3D Indoor Layout Synthesis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2510.02178/) (2025)
- [SceneAssistant: A Visual Feedback Agent for Open-Vocabulary 3D Scene Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.12238/) (2026)
- [FlowScene: Style-Consistent Indoor Scene Generation with Multimodal Graph Rectified Flow](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.19598/) (2026)
- [Robo-SGG: Exploiting Layout-Oriented Normalization and Restitution Can Improve Robust Scene Graph Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2504.12606/) (2025)
- [Edit-As-Act: Goal-Regressive Planning for Open-Vocabulary 3D Indoor Scene Editing](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.17583/) (2026)
- [Active Exploring like a Pigeon: Reinforcing Spatial Reasoning via Agentic Vision-Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2606.02459/) (2026)
- [3DResT: A Strong Baseline for Semi-Supervised 3D Referring Expression Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2504.12599/) (2025)
- [Investigating Domain Gaps for Indoor 3D Object Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2508.17439/) (2025)
- [SpatialGrammar: A Domain-Specific Language for LLM-Based 3D Indoor Scene Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2604.27555/) (2026)
- [Chain-of-Evidence Multimodal Reasoning for Few-shot Temporal Action Localization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2504.13460/) (2025)
- [SceneLCM: End-to-End Layout-Guided Interactive Indoor Scene Generation with Latent Consistency Model](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2506.07091/) (2025)
- [Apples on the Table? Evaluating Text-Guided 3D Scene Synthesis via Fine-Grained Constraint Verification](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2511.03001/) (2025)
- [HOG-Layout: Hierarchical 3D Scene Generation, Optimization and Editing via Vision-Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2604.10772/) (2026)
- [Pair2Scene: Learning Local Object Relations for Procedural Scene Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2604.11808/) (2026)
- [CasLayout: Cascaded 3D Layout Diffusion for Indoor Scene Synthesis with Implicit Relation Modeling](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2604.27361/) (2026)
- [Function2Scene: 3D Indoor Scene Layout from Functional Specifications](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2605.30819/) (2026)
- [Global-Local Monte Carlo Tree Search in Vision-Language Models for Text-to-3D Indoor Scene Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2606.06002/) (2026)
- [iARCS: Iterative Agentic RL for Controllable 3D Scene Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2608.06161/) (2026)
- [Multi-Modal Scene Graph with Kolmogorov-Arnold Experts for Audio-Visual Question Answering](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2511.23304/) (2025)
- [SDesc3D: Towards Layout-Aware 3D Indoor Scene Generation from Short Descriptions](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2604.01972/) (2026)
- [SGFormer++: Semantic Graph Transformer for Incremental 3D Scene Graph Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2606.15328/) (2026)
- [VTO: Visual Tool Orchestration for Video Anomaly Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2608.08219/) (2026)
- [PolyLayout: Hierarchical VLM-Guided Layout Generation Beyond Rectangular Rooms](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2608.10838/) (2026)
- [SceneMosaic: Efficient and Diverse Simulation-Ready Scene Generation via Hybrid Agentic Layout Evolution](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2609.05594/) (2026)
- [Frozen Scenes, Shifting Winners: Configuration Fragility in Text-to-3D Evaluation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2610.00447/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Large Vision-Language Models (VLMs), such as GPT-4, have achieved remarkable success across various fields. However, there are few studies on 3D indoor scene generation with VLMs. This paper considers this task as a planning problem subject to spatial and layout common sense constraints. To solve the problem with a VLM, we propose a new global-local tree search algorithm. Globally, the method places each object sequentially and explores multiple placements during each placement process, where the problem space is represented as a tree. To reduce the depth of the tree, we decompose the scene structure hierarchically, i.e. room level, region level, floor object level, and supported object level. The algorithm independently generates the floor objects in different regions and supported objects placed on different floor objects. Locally, we also decompose the sub-task, the placement of each object, into multiple steps. The algorithm searches the tree of problem space. To leverage the VLM model to produce positions of objects, we discretize the top-down view space as a dense grid and fill each cell with diverse emojis to make to cells distinct. We prompt the VLM with the emoji grid and the VLM produces a reasonable location for the object by describing the position with the name of emojis. The quantitative and qualitative experimental results illustrate our approach generates more plausible 3D scenes than state-of-the-art approaches. Our source code is available at https://github.com/dw-dengwei/TreeSearchGen .