# LuxDiT: Lighting Estimation with Video Diffusion Transformer

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.03680 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2509.03680/

## Key facts

- Cited by 15 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 62 of its 72 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 3 Sep 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 62)

- [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)
- [Photorealistic Text-to-Image Diffusion Models with Deep Language Understanding](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2205.11487/) (2022)
- [Scalable Diffusion Models with Transformers](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2212.09748/) (2022)
- [Elucidating the Design Space of Diffusion-Based Generative Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2206.00364/) (2022)
- [CogVideoX: Text-to-Video Diffusion Models with An Expert Transformer](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2408.06072/) (2024)
- [NeuS: Learning Neural Implicit Surfaces by Volume Rendering for Multi-view Reconstruction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2106.10689/) (2021)
- [Objaverse: A Universe of Annotated 3D Objects](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2212.08051/) (2022)
- [Align your Latents: High-Resolution Video Synthesis with Latent Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2304.08818/) (2023)
- [eDiff-I: Text-to-Image Diffusion Models with an Ensemble of Expert Denoisers](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2211.01324/) (2022)
- [Cosmos World Foundation Model Platform for Physical AI](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2501.03575/) (2025)
- [Resolution-robust Large Mask Inpainting with Fourier Convolutions](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2109.07161/) (2021)
- [MagicVideo: Efficient Video Generation With Latent Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2211.11018/) (2022)
- [NeRD: Neural Reflectance Decomposition from Image Collections](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2012.03918/) (2020)
- [Extracting Triangular 3D Models, Materials, and Lighting From Images](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2111.12503/) (2021)
- [PhySG: Inverse Rendering with Spherical Gaussians for Physics-based Material Editing and Relighting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2104.00674/) (2021)
- [Repurposing Diffusion-Based Image Generators for Monocular Depth Estimation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.02145/) (2023)
- [GeoWizard: Unleashing the Diffusion Priors for 3D Geometry Estimation from a Single Image](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.12013/) (2024)
- [Emu: Enhancing Image Generation Models Using Photogenic Needles in a Haystack](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2309.15807/) (2023)
- [DepthCrafter: Generating Consistent Long Depth Sequences for Open-world Videos](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2409.02095/) (2024)
- [Inverse Rendering for Complex Indoor Scenes: Shape, Spatially-Varying Lighting and SVBRDF from a Single Image](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1905.02722/) (2019)
- [Modeling Indirect Illumination for Inverse Rendering](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2204.06837/) (2022)
- [Lotus: Diffusion-based Visual Foundation Model for High-quality Dense Prediction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2409.18124/) (2024)
- [Shape, Light, and Material Decomposition from Images using Monte Carlo Rendering and Denoising](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2206.03380/) (2022)
- [Learning to Predict Indoor Illumination from a Single Image](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1704.00090/) (2017)
- [RGBleftrightarrowX: Image decomposition and synthesis using material- and lighting-aware diffusion models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2405.00666/) (2024)
- [StableNormal: Reducing Diffusion Variance for Stable and Sharp Normal](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.16864/) (2024)
- [VideoJAM: Joint Appearance-Motion Representations for Enhanced Motion Generation in Video Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2502.02492/) (2025)
- [Neural Inverse Rendering of an Indoor Scene from a Single Image](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1901.02453/) (2019)
- [InverseRenderNet: Learning single image inverse rendering](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1811.12328/) (2018)

## Built on by (most cited first, 15 of 15)

- [360Anything: Geometry-Free Lifting of Images and Videos to 360deg](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2601.16192/) (2026)
- [MVInverse: Feed-forward Multi-view Inverse Rendering in Seconds](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2512.21003/) (2025)
- [EditCtrl: Disentangled Local and Global Control for Real-Time Generative Video Editing](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2602.15031/) (2026)
- [ProxyPose: 6-DoF Pose Tracking via Video-to-Video Translation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2607.06555/) (2026)
- [Lighting in Motion: Spatiotemporal HDR Lighting Estimation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2512.13597/) (2025)
- [HDR Video Generation via Latent Alignment with Logarithmic Encoding](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2604.11788/) (2026)
- [ELITE: Efficient Gaussian Head Avatar from a Monocular Video via Learned Initialization and TEst-time Generative Adaptation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2601.10200/) (2026)
- [Video Generation Models Are Inherent Lighting Estimators](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2607.04674/) (2026)
- [Shedding Light: A Benchmark for Evaluating Lighting Understanding in Generative Image Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2609.10787/) (2026)
- [Under One Sun: Multi-Object Generative Perception of Materials and Illumination](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.19226/) (2026)
- [BRDFusion: Physics Meets Generation for Urban Scene Inverse Rendering](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2606.17049/) (2026)
- [AEGIR: Modeling Area Emitters for Indoor Inverse Rendering using Gaussian Splatting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2606.28635/) (2026)
- [Diffusion-Based Material Regularization for Physics-Based Inverse Rendering](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2606.31065/) (2026)
- [RelightFormer: Feed-forward Generative Transformer for Multiview Object Relighting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2609.07414/) (2026)
- [LAMP: 3D Source-Aware Lighting Estimation at Multiple Points](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2610.19266/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Estimating scene lighting from a single image or video remains a longstanding challenge in computer vision and graphics. Learning-based approaches are constrained by the scarcity of ground-truth HDR environment maps, which are expensive to capture and limited in diversity. While recent generative models offer strong priors for image synthesis, lighting estimation remains difficult due to its reliance on indirect visual cues, the need to infer global (non-local) context, and the recovery of high-dynamic-range outputs. We propose LuxDiT, a novel data-driven approach that fine-tunes a video diffusion transformer to generate HDR environment maps conditioned on visual input. Trained on a large synthetic dataset with diverse lighting conditions, our model learns to infer illumination from indirect visual cues and generalizes effectively to real-world scenes. To improve semantic alignment between the input and the predicted environment map, we introduce a low-rank adaptation finetuning strategy using a collected dataset of HDR panoramas. Our method produces accurate lighting predictions with realistic angular high-frequency details, outperforming existing state-of-the-art techniques in both quantitative and qualitative evaluations.