# GIFSplat: Generative Prior-Guided Iterative Feed-Forward 3D Gaussian Splatting from Sparse Views

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2602.22571 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2602.22571/

## Key facts

- Cited by 4 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 30 of its 34 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 26 Feb 2026.

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

- [The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Deep Features as a Perceptual Metric](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1801.03924/) (2018)
- [3D Gaussian Splatting for Real-Time Radiance Field Rendering](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2308.04079/) (2023)
- [Instant Neural Graphics Primitives with a Multiresolution Hash Encoding](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2201.05989/) (2022)
- [DreamFusion: Text-to-3D using 2D Diffusion](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2209.14988/) (2022)
- [pixelNeRF: Neural Radiance Fields from One or Few Images](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2012.02190/) (2020)
- [DUSt3R: Geometric 3D Vision Made Easy](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.14132/) (2023)
- [VGGT: Visual Geometry Grounded Transformer](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.11651/) (2025)
- [Point Transformer](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2011.00931/) (2020)
- [Grounding Image Matching in 3D with MASt3R](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.09756/) (2024)
- [pixelSplat: 3D Gaussian Splats from Image Pairs for Scalable Generalizable 3D Reconstruction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.12337/) (2023)
- [Mip-Splatting: Alias-free 3D Gaussian Splatting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.16493/) (2023)
- [MVSplat: Efficient 3D Gaussian Splatting from Sparse Multi-View Images](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.14627/) (2024)
- [DL3DV-10K: A Large-Scale Scene Dataset for Deep Learning-based 3D Vision](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.16256/) (2023)
- [ViewCrafter: Taming Video Diffusion Models for High-fidelity Novel View Synthesis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2409.02048/) (2024)
- [Fast3R: Towards 3D Reconstruction of 1000+ Images in One Forward Pass](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2501.13928/) (2025)
- [DepthSplat: Connecting Gaussian Splatting and Depth](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.13862/) (2024)
- [No Pose, No Problem: Surprisingly Simple 3D Gaussian Splats from Sparse Unposed Images](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.24207/) (2024)
- [AnySplat: Feed-forward 3D Gaussian Splatting from Unconstrained Views](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.23716/) (2025)
- [FLARE: Feed-forward Geometry, Appearance and Camera Estimation from Uncalibrated Sparse Views](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2502.12138/) (2025)
- [Splatt3R: Zero-shot Gaussian Splatting from Uncalibrated Image Pairs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2408.13912/) (2024)
- [Difix3D+: Improving 3D Reconstructions with Single-Step Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.01774/) (2025)
- [3DGS-Enhancer: Enhancing Unbounded 3D Gaussian Splatting with View-consistent 2D Diffusion Priors](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.16266/) (2024)
- [Learning to Render Novel Views from Wide-Baseline Stereo Pairs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2304.08463/) (2023)
- [An Image is Worth 16x16 Words, What is a Video Worth?](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.13915/) (2021)
- [Bolt3D: Generating 3D Scenes in Seconds](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.14445/) (2025)
- [GenFusion: Closing the Loop between Reconstruction and Generation via Videos](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.21219/) (2025)
- [FlowR: Flowing from Sparse to Dense 3D Reconstructions](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2504.01647/) (2025)
- [iLRM: An Iterative Large 3D Reconstruction Model](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2507.23277/) (2025)
- [ReSplat: Learning Recurrent Gaussian Splatting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2510.08575/) (2025)
- [SplatFlow: Learning Multi-frame Optical Flow via Splatting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2306.08887/) (2023)

## Built on by (most cited first, 4 of 4)

- [Learn2Splat: Extending the Horizon of Learned 3DGS Optimization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2605.15760/) (2026)
- [AIR: Amortized Image Reconstruction Framework for Self-Supervised Feed-Forward 2D Gaussian Splatting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2605.20820/) (2026)
- [FlowBender: Feedback-Aware Training for Self-Correcting Conditional Flows](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2606.20404/) (2026)
- [PhGS: Post-Hoc Pruning and Refinement of Single-View Feed-Forward 3D Gaussian Reconstructions](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2609.20623/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Feed-forward 3D reconstruction offers substantial runtime advantages over per-scene optimization, which remains slow at inference and often fragile under sparse views. However, existing feed-forward methods still have potential for further performance gains, especially for out-of-domain data, and struggle to retain second-level inference time once a generative prior is introduced. These limitations stem from the one-shot prediction paradigm in existing feed-forward pipeline: models are strictly bounded by capacity, lack inference-time refinement, and are ill-suited for continuously injecting generative priors. We introduce GIFSplat, a purely feed-forward iterative refinement framework for 3D Gaussian Splatting from sparse unposed views. A small number of forward-only residual updates progressively refine current 3D scene using rendering evidence, achieve favorable balance between efficiency and quality. Furthermore, we distill a frozen diffusion prior into Gaussian-level cues from enhanced novel renderings without gradient backpropagation or ever-increasing view-set expansion, thereby enabling per-scene adaptation with generative prior while preserving feed-forward efficiency. Across DL3DV, RealEstate10K, and DTU, GIFSplat consistently outperforms state-of-the-art feed-forward baselines, improving PSNR by up to +2.1 dB, and it maintains second-scale inference time without requiring camera poses or any test-time gradient optimization.