Definition
Inverse rendering infers the underlying 3D structure and appearance of a scene purely from 2D observations. It inverts the direction of computer graphics: graphics renders images from a 3D scene, inverse rendering recovers the 3D scene from images.
flowchart LR
S["3D scene"] -- "rendering (graphics)" --> I["images"]
I -- "inverse rendering (vision)" --> S
NeRF is the best-known example. Instead of storing explicit geometry, it learns how light interacts with the scene and can then generate photorealistic novel views from a few input images.
Appears in
- Lecture 1, Vision vs Graphics: vision as the inverse of graphics
- Lecture 1, NeRF: NeRF as inverse rendering
- Lecture 7, Training NeRF: differentiable volume rendering + photometric loss