NeRF: Representing Scenes as Neural Radiance Fields for View Synthesis (ML Research Paper Explained)

#nerf​ #neuralrendering​ #deeplearning​

View Synthesis is a tricky problem, especially when only given a sparse set of images as an input. NeRF embeds an entire scene into the weights of a feedforward neural network, trained by backpropagation through a differential volume rendering procedure, and achieves state-of-the-art view synthesis. It includes directional dependence and is able to capture fine structural details, as well as reflection effects and transparency.

OUTLINE:
0:00​ - Intro & Overview
4:50​ - View Synthesis Task Description
5:50​ - The fundamental difference to classic Deep Learning
7:00​ - NeRF Core Concept
15:30​ - Training the NeRF from sparse views
20:50​ - Radiance Field Volume Rendering
23:20​ - Resulting View Dependence
24:00​ - Positional Encoding
28:00​ - Hierarchical Volume Sampling
30:15​ - Experimental Results
33:30​ - Comments & Conclusion

Paper: https://arxiv.org/abs/2003.08934​
Website & Code: https://www.matthewtancik.com/nerf​

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Abstract:
We present a method that achieves state-of-the-art results for synthesizing novel views of complex scenes by optimizing an underlying continuous volumetric scene function using a sparse set of input views. Our algorithm represents a scene using a fully-connected (non-convolutional) deep network, whose input is a single continuous 5D coordinate (spatial location (x,y,z) and viewing direction (θ,ϕ)) and whose output is the volume density and view-dependent emitted radiance at that spatial location. We synthesize views by querying 5D coordinates along camera rays and use classic volume rendering techniques to project the output colors and densities into an image. Because volume rendering is naturally differentiable, the only input required to optimize our representation is a set of images with known camera poses. We describe how to effectively optimize neural radiance fields to render photorealistic novel views of scenes with complicated geometry and appearance, and demonstrate results that outperform prior work on neural rendering and view synthesis. View synthesis results are best viewed as videos, so we urge readers to view our supplementary video for convincing comparisons.

Authors: Ben Mildenhall, Pratul P. Srinivasan, Matthew Tancik, Jonathan T. Barron, Ravi Ramamoorthi, Ren Ng

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