Stroke of Surprise: Progressive Semantic Illusions in Vector Sketching

Fuente: arXiv
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Auteurs principaux: Cheng, Huai-Hsun, Zhang, Siang-Ling, Liu, Yu-Lun
Format: Preprint
Publié: 2026
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author Cheng, Huai-Hsun
Zhang, Siang-Ling
Liu, Yu-Lun
author_facet Cheng, Huai-Hsun
Zhang, Siang-Ling
Liu, Yu-Lun
contents Visual illusions traditionally rely on spatial manipulations such as multi-view consistency. In this work, we introduce Progressive Semantic Illusions, a novel vector sketching task where a single sketch undergoes a dramatic semantic transformation through the sequential addition of strokes. We present Stroke of Surprise, a generative framework that optimizes vector strokes to satisfy distinct semantic interpretations at different drawing stages. The core challenge lies in the "dual-constraint": initial prefix strokes must form a coherent object (e.g., a duck) while simultaneously serving as the structural foundation for a second concept (e.g., a sheep) upon adding delta strokes. To address this, we propose a sequence-aware joint optimization framework driven by a dual-branch Score Distillation Sampling (SDS) mechanism. Unlike sequential approaches that freeze the initial state, our method dynamically adjusts prefix strokes to discover a "common structural subspace" valid for both targets. Furthermore, we introduce a novel Overlay Loss that enforces spatial complementarity, ensuring structural integration rather than occlusion. Extensive experiments demonstrate that our method significantly outperforms state-of-the-art baselines in recognizability and illusion strength, successfully expanding visual anagrams from the spatial to the temporal dimension. Project page: https://stroke-of-surprise.github.io/
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publishDate 2026
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spellingShingle Stroke of Surprise: Progressive Semantic Illusions in Vector Sketching
Cheng, Huai-Hsun
Zhang, Siang-Ling
Liu, Yu-Lun
Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition
Visual illusions traditionally rely on spatial manipulations such as multi-view consistency. In this work, we introduce Progressive Semantic Illusions, a novel vector sketching task where a single sketch undergoes a dramatic semantic transformation through the sequential addition of strokes. We present Stroke of Surprise, a generative framework that optimizes vector strokes to satisfy distinct semantic interpretations at different drawing stages. The core challenge lies in the "dual-constraint": initial prefix strokes must form a coherent object (e.g., a duck) while simultaneously serving as the structural foundation for a second concept (e.g., a sheep) upon adding delta strokes. To address this, we propose a sequence-aware joint optimization framework driven by a dual-branch Score Distillation Sampling (SDS) mechanism. Unlike sequential approaches that freeze the initial state, our method dynamically adjusts prefix strokes to discover a "common structural subspace" valid for both targets. Furthermore, we introduce a novel Overlay Loss that enforces spatial complementarity, ensuring structural integration rather than occlusion. Extensive experiments demonstrate that our method significantly outperforms state-of-the-art baselines in recognizability and illusion strength, successfully expanding visual anagrams from the spatial to the temporal dimension. Project page: https://stroke-of-surprise.github.io/
title Stroke of Surprise: Progressive Semantic Illusions in Vector Sketching
topic Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2602.12280