# SceneNAT: Masked Generative Modeling for Language-Guided Indoor Scene Synthesis

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2601.07218 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2601.07218/

## Key facts

- Cited by 2 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 65 of its 87 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 12 Jan 2026.

## Builds on (most cited first, 30 of 65)

- [BERT: Pre-training of Deep Bidirectional Transformers for Language Understanding](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1810.04805/) (2018)
- [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)
- [PyTorch: An Imperative Style, High-Performance Deep Learning Library](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1912.01703/) (2019)
- [End-to-End Object Detection with Transformers](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2005.12872/) (2020)
- [Classifier-Free Diffusion Guidance](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2207.12598/) (2022)
- [Neural Discrete Representation Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1711.00937/) (2017)
- [Improved Denoising Diffusion Probabilistic Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2102.09672/) (2021)
- [MaskGIT: Masked Generative Image Transformer](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2202.04200/) (2022)
- [Muse: Text-To-Image Generation via Masked Generative Transformers](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2301.00704/) (2023)
- [MoMask: Generative Masked Modeling of 3D Human Motions](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.00063/) (2023)
- [3D-FRONT: 3D Furnished Rooms with layOuts and semaNTics](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2011.09127/) (2020)
- [ProcTHOR: Large-Scale Embodied AI Using Procedural Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2206.06994/) (2022)
- [An Embodied Generalist Agent in 3D World](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.12871/) (2023)
- [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)
- [Using the Output Embedding to Improve Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1608.05859/) (2016)
- [Holodeck: Language Guided Generation of 3D Embodied AI Environments](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.09067/) (2023)
- [Diffusion-based Generation, Optimization, and Planning in 3D Scenes](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2301.06015/) (2023)
- [MAGE: MAsked Generative Encoder to Unify Representation Learning and Image Synthesis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2211.09117/) (2022)
- [The Role of ImageNet Classes in Fr'echet Inception Distance](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2203.06026/) (2022)
- [ATISS: Autoregressive Transformers for Indoor Scene Synthesis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2110.03675/) (2021)
- [OpenShape: Scaling Up 3D Shape Representation Towards Open-World Understanding](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.10764/) (2023)
- [Scene-LLM: Extending Language Model for 3D Visual Understanding and Reasoning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.11401/) (2024)
- [Habitat Synthetic Scenes Dataset (HSSD-200): An Analysis of 3D Scene Scale and Realism Tradeoffs for ObjectGoal Navigation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2306.11290/) (2023)
- [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)
- [Fast and Flexible Indoor Scene Synthesis via Deep Convolutional Generative Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1811.12463/) (2018)

## Built on by (most cited first, 2 of 2)

- [SceneReVis: A Self-Reflective Vision-Grounded Framework for 3D Indoor Scene Synthesis via Multi-Turn RL](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2602.09432/) (2026)
- [SPHERE: Adaptive VR Indoor Scene Generation via LLM-Enhanced Spatial Preference Learning and Human-in-the-Loop RL](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2610.02023/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

We present SceneNAT, a masked non-autoregressive Transformer for 3D indoor scene synthesis from natural language instructions. It generates complete scenes in a few parallel decoding passes, improving both quality and efficiency over prior methods. SceneNAT is trained via masked modeling over fully discretized representations of both semantic and spatial attributes. By applying a masking strategy at both the attribute level and the instance level, the model can better capture intra-object and inter-object structure. To boost relational reasoning, SceneNAT employs a relational reasoning module (RRM) that captures implicit spatial constraints. By formulating relation modeling as a set prediction task, it extracts structure-aware features to guide the layout generation without explicit sequential parsing. Extensive experiments on 3D-FRONT show that SceneNAT outperforms state-of-the-art autoregressive and diffusion baselines in both semantic compliance and spatial arrangement accuracy while using substantially lower computational cost, enabling high-throughput generation of diverse scenes at scale.