Summary
Paper presents (yet another) approach to image-to-3D generation, or generating multi-views with 3D consistency, tapping into the recent development in diffusion models and in particular, stable video diffusion is employed. Authors novel claim consists of jointly training of multiview generation and 3D reconstruction, guided by their 3D-aware feedback or self-conditioning, more consistent multi-views and 3D reconstruction can be achieved than existing approaches where joint training is absent or inadequate. Quantitative and qualitative comparison with SyncDreamer, SV3D, VideeoMV, TripSR, LGM (3DGS) and InstantMesh (NeRF) are conducted. Running times and ablation studies are provided.
Strengths
1. The paper is very readable.
2. STOA results with incremental improvements over recent prior work are presented.
Weaknesses
Following the emergence of powerful diffusion models in generating or hallucinating highly realistic images 1-2 years ago, many researchers have observed that while the generated images look plausible, they lack 3D consistency and thus we have seen various approaches in recent computer vision and machine learning venues on optimizing image generation and 3D geometric consistency in tandem.
The work may thus be categorized into this and relevant line of research: simply google "diffusion model image generation mulitiview consistency 3D reconstruction"... The main difference claimed by the authors is summarized in Figure 1 where the feedback is 3D aware, rather than just RGB (losses).
Given this background:
1. The main proposed idea of 3D-aware feedback to guide multiview diffusion, as stated in my summary, is not very novel.
2. Related to the above, the 3D-aware feedback (section 3.3) consists of the RGB images and, unlike others using depth maps, the main new geometric/3D "proxy" in the joint optimization or training proposed are "canonical coordinates maps (CCM) (Li et al., 2023b) from the reconstructed 3D model as the condition to guide the next denoising step of multi-view generation." Despite the advantages of CCM over depth/normal maps mentioned by the authors, this technicality in my opinion is hardly justified as ICLR contribution, unless we are seeing substantial improvement of the results, which brings us to:
3. While achieving STOA results which arguably contain 3D-consistent fine details such as thin structures, as well as decal and textures on surfaces, the class of showcase results still belongs to that of SynDreamer and the present contenders compared in the paper. In particular, some flaws still exist in their 360$^\circ$ demos, especially when the reconstruction is viewed from the side which appears to be too flat when the input view is frontal (e.g., check out the stuff toy holding a pink heart, the statuette with two large pony tails, and the cute dinosaur, for instance, in the supplemental material), suffering something reminiscent of single-view reconstruction bias which can be remotely related bas-relief ambiguity when the reconstructed model can only look plausible at frontal views.
Questions
My main doubts lie in the incremental technical novelty, specifically, I am not quite convinced from Figure 1 and accompanying text in the paper that the paper makes such substantial contribution in using 3D (geometry) feedback to guide multiview diffusion. Apparently prior works, at least appeared in 2023/24 use depth or other 2.5/3D proxies, to guide the diffusion process, and/or vice versa, because this is such a straightforward idea even dating back early 2000s in the era of image-based modeling and rendering.
To give the authors some ideas, during ECCV 2024 (notwithstanding, concurrent works with ICLR 2025) there are maybe 15 papers dealing with this problem with somewhat similar pipeline where multiview images and (some form of) 3D geometry work in tandem to improve their intermediate results and thus final reconstruction, iteratively or recursively. The burden lies on the authors but not the reviewer in delineating the technical differences and novelties to produce a convincing case why this paper as it is written, is ICLR worthy, which is unclear in the main paper, although the implementation steps are clearly described (otherwise I would have scored the paper lower than 5 overall). Authors related work section is some good start, but some passing statements on STOA may not be adequate or convincing.
Otherwise, to qualify for simple and worthwhile ICLR ideas, I need to see substantial improvement on the results over STOA to speak for themselves, which I am not seeing as explained above.