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Main Authors: Yin, Yue, Tao, Enze, Campbell, Dylan
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
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Online Access:https://arxiv.org/abs/2511.17340
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author Yin, Yue
Tao, Enze
Campbell, Dylan
author_facet Yin, Yue
Tao, Enze
Campbell, Dylan
contents Generative image models can produce convincingly real images, with plausible shapes, textures, layouts and lighting. However, one domain in which they perform notably poorly is in the synthesis of transparent objects, which exhibit refraction, reflection, absorption and scattering. Refraction is a particular challenge, because refracted pixel rays often intersect with surfaces observed in other parts of the image, providing a constraint on the color. It is clear from inspection that generative models have not distilled the laws of optics sufficiently well to accurately render refractive objects. In this work, we consider the problem of generating images with accurate refraction, given a text prompt. We synchronize the pixels within the object's boundary with those outside by warping and merging the pixels using Snell's Law of Refraction, at each step of the generation trajectory. For those surfaces that are not directly observed in the image, but are visible via refraction or reflection, we recover their appearance by synchronizing the image with a second generated image -- a panorama centered at the object -- using the same warping and merging procedure. We demonstrate that our approach generates much more optically-plausible images that respect the physical constraints.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2511_17340
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Refracting Reality: Generating Images with Realistic Transparent Objects
Yin, Yue
Tao, Enze
Campbell, Dylan
Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition
Generative image models can produce convincingly real images, with plausible shapes, textures, layouts and lighting. However, one domain in which they perform notably poorly is in the synthesis of transparent objects, which exhibit refraction, reflection, absorption and scattering. Refraction is a particular challenge, because refracted pixel rays often intersect with surfaces observed in other parts of the image, providing a constraint on the color. It is clear from inspection that generative models have not distilled the laws of optics sufficiently well to accurately render refractive objects. In this work, we consider the problem of generating images with accurate refraction, given a text prompt. We synchronize the pixels within the object's boundary with those outside by warping and merging the pixels using Snell's Law of Refraction, at each step of the generation trajectory. For those surfaces that are not directly observed in the image, but are visible via refraction or reflection, we recover their appearance by synchronizing the image with a second generated image -- a panorama centered at the object -- using the same warping and merging procedure. We demonstrate that our approach generates much more optically-plausible images that respect the physical constraints.
title Refracting Reality: Generating Images with Realistic Transparent Objects
topic Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2511.17340