# ShadowDraw: From Any Object to Shadow-Drawing Compositional Art

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2512.05110 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2512.05110/

## Key facts

- Cited by 1 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 24 of its 54 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 4 Dec 2025.

## Builds on (most cited first, 24 of 24)

- [Learning Transferable Visual Models From Natural Language Supervision](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.00020/) (2021)
- [CLIPScore: A Reference-free Evaluation Metric for Image Captioning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2104.08718/) (2021)
- [Objaverse: A Universe of Annotated 3D Objects](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2212.08051/) (2022)
- [RePaint: Inpainting using Denoising Diffusion Probabilistic Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2201.09865/) (2022)
- [ImageReward: Learning and Evaluating Human Preferences for Text-to-Image Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2304.05977/) (2023)
- [DoRA: Weight-Decomposed Low-Rank Adaptation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2402.09353/) (2024)
- [Evaluating Text-to-Visual Generation with Image-to-Text Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.01291/) (2024)
- [Human Preference Score: Better Aligning Text-to-Image Models with Human Preference](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.14420/) (2023)
- [Optimizing Prompts for Text-to-Image Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2212.09611/) (2022)
- [CLIPDraw: Exploring Text-to-Drawing Synthesis through Language-Image Encoders](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2106.14843/) (2021)
- [MeshLRM: Large Reconstruction Model for High-Quality Meshes](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.12385/) (2024)
- [Learning to generate line drawings that convey geometry and semantics](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2203.12691/) (2022)
- [Photo-Sketching: Inferring Contour Drawings from Images](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1901.00542/) (2019)
- [Learning Temporal Pose Estimation from Sparsely-Labeled Videos](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1906.04016/) (2019)
- [SketchAgent: Language-Driven Sequential Sketch Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2411.17673/) (2024)
- [Im2Pencil: Controllable Pencil Illustration from Photographs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1903.08682/) (2019)
- [DoodleFormer: Creative Sketch Drawing with Transformers](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2112.03258/) (2021)
- [Wired Perspectives: Multi-View Wire Art Embraces Generative AI](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.15421/) (2023)
- [Free-hand Sketch Synthesis with Deformable Stroke Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1510.02644/) (2015)
- [Neural Contours: Learning to Draw Lines from 3D Shapes](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2003.10333/) (2020)
- [Neural Strokes: Stylized Line Drawing of 3D Shapes](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2110.03900/) (2021)
- [Shadow Art Revisited: A Differentiable Rendering Based Approach](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2107.14539/) (2021)
- [Illusion3D: 3D Multiview Illusion with 2D Diffusion Priors](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2412.09625/) (2024)
- [Hand-Shadow Poser](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.07012/) (2025)

## Built on by (most cited first, 1 of 1)

- [Stroke of Surprise: Progressive Semantic Illusions in Vector Sketching](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2602.12280/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

We introduce ShadowDraw, a framework that transforms ordinary 3D objects into shadow-drawing compositional art. Given a 3D object, our system predicts scene parameters, including object pose and lighting, together with a partial line drawing, such that the cast shadow completes the drawing into a recognizable image. To this end, we optimize scene configurations to reveal meaningful shadows, employ shadow strokes to guide line drawing generation, and adopt automatic evaluation to enforce shadow-drawing coherence and visual quality. Experiments show that ShadowDraw produces compelling results across diverse inputs, from real-world scans and curated datasets to generative assets, and naturally extends to multi-object scenes, animations, and physical deployments. Our work provides a practical pipeline for creating shadow-drawing art and broadens the design space of computational visual art, bridging the gap between algorithmic design and artistic storytelling. Check out our project page https://red-fairy.github.io/ShadowDraw/ for more results and an end-to-end real-world demonstration of our pipeline!