# CineRecon: Benchmarking Frontier Models for Agentic Cinematic Reconstruction

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2610.16577 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2610.16577/

## Key facts

- No citing papers in the map yet (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Placed in Multimodal and embodied agents, one of 16 directions in LLM agents and tool use.
- Builds on 28 of its 36 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 12 Oct 2026.

## Placed in

- LLM agents and tool use / [Multimodal and embodied agents](https://mlsanity.com/agents/multimodal-and-embodied-agents/)

## Builds on (most cited first, 28 of 28)

- [VBench: Comprehensive Benchmark Suite for Video Generative Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.17982/) (2023)
- [MotionCtrl: A Unified and Flexible Motion Controller for Video Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.03641/) (2023)
- [CameraCtrl: Enabling Camera Control for Text-to-Video Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.02101/) (2024)
- [TIFA: Accurate and Interpretable Text-to-Image Faithfulness Evaluation with Question Answering](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.11897/) (2023)
- [VIEScore: Towards Explainable Metrics for Conditional Image Synthesis Evaluation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.14867/) (2023)
- [VideoScore: Building Automatic Metrics to Simulate Fine-grained Human Feedback for Video Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.15252/) (2024)
- [PhysGen: Rigid-Body Physics-Grounded Image-to-Video Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2409.18964/) (2024)
- [Davidsonian Scene Graph: Improving Reliability in Fine-grained Evaluation for Text-to-Image Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2310.18235/) (2023)
- [SceneCraft: An LLM Agent for Synthesizing 3D Scene as Blender Code](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.01248/) (2024)
- [Towards Understanding Camera Motions in Any Video](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2504.15376/) (2025)
- [VMBench: A Benchmark for Perception-Aligned Video Motion Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.10076/) (2025)
- [Vision-as-Inverse-Graphics Agent via Interleaved Multimodal Reasoning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2601.11109/) (2026)
- [TC-Bench: Benchmarking Temporal Compositionality in Text-to-Video and Image-to-Video Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.08656/) (2024)
- [BlenderGym: Benchmarking Foundational Model Systems for Graphics Editing](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2504.01786/) (2025)
- [VideoCon: Robust Video-Language Alignment via Contrast Captions](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.10111/) (2023)
- [Re-Thinking Inverse Graphics With Large Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.15228/) (2024)
- [IR3D-Bench: Evaluating Vision-Language Model Scene Understanding as Agentic Inverse Rendering](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2506.23329/) (2025)
- [Code2Worlds: Empowering Coding LLMs for 4D World Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2602.11757/) (2026)
- [3DCodeBench: Benchmarking Agentic Procedural 3D Modeling Via Code](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2606.01057/) (2026)
- [Thinking in Blender: Staged Executable Inverse Graphics with Vision-Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2606.02580/) (2026)
- [Shape-for-Motion: Precise and Consistent Video Editing with 3D Proxy](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2506.22432/) (2025)
- [SimWorlds: A Multi-Agent System for Dynamic 3D Scene Creation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2607.01766/) (2026)
- [VisPhyWorld: Probing Physical Reasoning via Code-Driven Video Reconstruction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2602.13294/) (2026)
- [SceneActBench: Can Agents Act on the 3D Scenes They See?](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2607.22393/) (2026)
- [BVB: Benchmarking Agentic Video Understanding via Programmatic Reconstruction in Blender](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2609.15478/) (2026)
- [SpatialCrafter: Single Image World Modeling with Generative 3D Proxies](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2608.27073/) (2026)
- [4DCodeBench: Benchmarking Agents on Inverse Graphics of Dynamic Scenes](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2610.03715/) (2026)
- [3DHarnessBench: Probing Agentic 3D-to-Code Capabilities of Frontier Vision-Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2609.06535/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Reconstructing reference videos as editable dynamic 3D scenes is an important path toward controllable video generation for filmmaking: these scenes provide modifiable, renderable visual proxies that enable explicit control over scene layout, subject actions, and camera behavior. To evaluate agents' ability to reconstruct editable dynamic 3D scenes from dynamic reference videos, we introduce CineRecon, a benchmark comprising 50 reference videos and 360 annotated evaluation clips. The reference videos span film, real-world footage, and games. Given a complete video, an agent uses tools to construct, animate, render, and refine its reconstruction. We evaluate this task under three representation settings: Proxy, Simplified, and Detailed. These settings increase geometric and appearance requirements while retaining the same requirements for spatial relations, camera behavior, and subject dynamics. This design tests whether agents can reproduce the events in a video when detailed appearance is unnecessary, and how performance changes as representation requirements increase. For evaluation, we construct checklists that associate observable properties and events with specific entities and times. A vision-language judge compares timestamp-aligned reference and rendered frames across 11 categories, grouped into camera, static, and dynamic consistency dimensions. We evaluate 12 models using their corresponding agent harnesses and find failures across all three dimensions. Subject motions and interactions remain difficult to reproduce even under the Proxy setting.