This paper tackles the challenge of recovering 4D dynamic scenes from videos captured by as few as four portable cameras. Learning to model scene dynamics for temporally consistent novel-view rendering is a foundational task in computer graphics, where previous works often require dense multi-view captures using camera arrays of dozens or even hundreds of views. We propose 4C4D, a novel framework that enables high-fidelity 4D Gaussian Splatting from video captures of extremely sparse cameras. Our key insight lies that the geometric learning under sparse settings is substantially more difficult than modeling appearance. Driven by this observation, we introduce a Neural Decaying Function on Gaussian opacities for enhancing the geometric modeling capability of 4D Gaussians. This design mitigates the inherent imbalance between geometry and appearance modeling in 4DGS by encouraging the 4DGS gradients to focus more on geometric learning. Extensive experiments across sparse-view datasets with varying camera overlaps show that 4C4D achieves superior performance over prior art. Project page at: https://junshengzhou.github.io/4C4D.
Figures & tables
Figure 2: Overview of 4C4D. We introduce a Neural Decaying Function fθ , implemented as a lightweight neural network, to adaptively control the opacity decay of Gaussians. Given key Gaussian attributes as input, fθ predicts a factor that controls the decay of Gaussian opacities. During training, both the Neural Decaying Function and the 4D Gaussians are jointly optimized via gradient backpropagation under a photometric rendering loss.
Figure 3: Rendered RGB and depth results from 4DGS trained with and without our Neural Decaying Function, evaluated on both training and unseen views. Without neural decaying, 4DGS can overfit the training views but fails to generalize to unseen viewpoints, due to the learned poor geometry.
Figure 4: Visual comparisons under Neural3DV dataset.
Figure 5: Visual comparisons under ENeRF-Outdoor dataset.
Method
PSNR ↑
DSSIM 1 ↓
DSSIM 2 ↓
LPIPS ↓
4DGaussians
20.82
0.117
0.077
0.190
STGS
17.70
0.158
0.107
0.325
4DGS
20.60
0.143
0.094
0.244
Ex4DGS
19.33
0.149
0.099
0.239
Ours
22.29
0.098
0.062
0.146
Table 1: Quantitative comparison under Neural3DV dataset.
Figure 6: Visual comparisons under Mobile-Stage dataset.
Method
PSNR ↑
DSSIM 1 ↓
DSSIM 2 ↓
LPIPS ↓
4DGaussians
18.21
0.300
0.183
0.456
STGS
15.51
0.315
0.186
0.688
4DGS
23.52
0.183
0.112
0.151
Ex4DGS
21.89
0.224
0.138
0.263
Ours
24.32
0.162
0.097
0.121
Table 2: Quantitative comparisons under ENeRF-Outdoor dataset.
Method
PSNR ↑
DSSIM 1 ↓
DSSIM 2 ↓
LPIPS ↓
4DGaussians
20.15
0.218
0.144
0.226
STGS
14.30
0.321
0.229
0.658
4DGS
22.15
0.199
0.135
0.180
Ex4DGS
17.85
0.272
0.193
0.260
Ours
22.36
0.194
0.129
0.121
Table 3: Quantitative comparison under Mobile-Stage dataset.
Figure 7: Visual comparisons under the self-captured Dyn4Cam dataset.
Method
PSNR ↑
DSSIM 1 ↓
DSSIM 2 ↓
LPIPS ↓
w/o Neural Decay
22.60
0.097
0.062
0.147
w/o Vis Detect
24.49
0.075
0.045
0.127
Full
24.68
0.070
0.042
0.115
Table 4: Ablation study on the framework designs.
Method
PSNR ↑
DSSIM 1 ↓
DSSIM 2 ↓
LPIPS ↓
None
22.60
0.097
0.062
0.147
Constant
24.31
0.075
0.046
0.125
Pow Decay
24.35
0.074
0.045
0.124
Exp Decay
24.32
0.077
0.047
0.135
Ours
24.68
0.070
0.042
0.115
Table 5: Ablation study on decaying functions.
Figure 8: More visual comparisons under Neural3DV dataset.
Coffee Martini
Cook Spinach
Cut Roasted Beef
Method
PSNR
DSSIM 1
DSSIM 2
LPIPS
PSNR
DSSIM 1
DSSIM 2
LPIPS
PSNR
DSSIM 1
DSSIM 2
LPIPS
STGS [ 20 ]
16.62
0.189
0.129
0.373
18.72
0.134
0.090
0.278
18.65
0.135
0.089
0.286
4DGS [ 47 ]
17.50
0.174
0.118
0.289
21.96
0.106
0.067
0.205
21.90
0.102
0.064
0.191
Ex4DGS [ 17 ]
17.45
0.179
0.124
0.281
20.61
0.138
0.089
0.224
20.33
0.144
0.092
0.228
Ours
19.57
0.140
0.093
0.203
24.44
0.075
0.046
0.111
23.22
0.083
0.051
0.124
Table 6: Quantitative comparison on Neural3DV dataset (Part 1).
Flame Salmon
Flame Steak
Sear Steak
Method
PSNR
DSSIM 1
DSSIM 2
LPIPS
PSNR
DSSIM 1
DSSIM 2
LPIPS
PSNR
DSSIM 1
DSSIM 2
LPIPS
STGS [ 20 ]
14.54
0.227
0.162
0.474
18.96
0.131
0.086
0.270
18.72
0.136
0.090
0.271
4DGS [ 47 ]
17.81
0.163
0.110
0.283
22.55
0.212
0.146
0.294
21.86
0.102
0.064
0.202
Ex4DGS [ 17 ]
15.40
0.193
0.135
0.308
21.39
0.123
0.077
0.200
20.80
0.119
0.078
0.196
Ours
19.15
0.136
0.091
0.205
23.72
0.075
0.046
0.114
23.66
0.078
0.048
0.118
Table 7: Quantitative comparison on Neural3DV dataset (Part 2).
Actor1_4
Actor2_3
Actor5_6
Method
PSNR
DSSIM 1
DSSIM 2
LPIPS
PSNR
DSSIM 1
DSSIM 2
LPIPS
PSNR
DSSIM 1
DSSIM 2
LPIPS
STGS [ 20 ]
15.50
0.314
0.186
0.690
15.55
0.313
0.184
0.686
15.44
0.316
0.187
0.682
4DGS [ 47 ]
23.24
0.194
0.119
0.154
23.64
0.186
0.114
0.154
23.71
0.145
0.087
0.139
Ex4DGS [ 17 ]
20.98
0.229
0.142
0.269
22.02
0.236
0.145
0.283
22.68
0.208
0.125
0.235
Ours
24.07
0.182
0.109
0.129
24.39
0.175
0.104
0.124
24.50
0.130
0.077
0.111
Table 8: Quantitative comparison on ENeRF-Outdoor dataset.
Figure 9: More visual comparisons under ENeRF-Outdoor dataset.
Figure 10: More visual comparisons under Dyn4Cam dataset (Part 1).
Figure 11: More visual comparisons under Dyn4Cam dataset (Part 2).
Dynamic 4D Gaussian Splatting has emerged as an efficient representation for dynamic novel view synthesis through explicit scene modeling and real-time rendering. However, existing methods typically require dense multi-view videos for sufficient geometric constraints, making capture expensive and limiting sparse-camera deployment. Reducing input views lowers acquisition cost but weakens geometry supervision, often causing missing structures and floating Gaussians. Depth priors provide geometric cues, yet no single source offers both dense coverage and reliable geometry. Monocular depth provides dense structure but is scale-ambiguous and locally biased, whereas multi-view geometric depth provides incomplete anchors consistent with the reconstruction coordinate system. To exploit their complementarity, we propose D2-4DGS, a sparse-camera dynamic 4D Gaussian Splatting framework guided by dual-source depth priors. We align monocular estimates with valid multi-view geometric depths and verify their consistency to identify reliable geometric anchors. These verified anchors support consistency-aware pruning and depth supervision, while verified geometric depths and aligned mono-only estimates provide candidate geometry for densification in under-reconstructed regions. Finally, RGB-D joint optimization improves appearance fidelity and geometric consistency under sparse-view supervision. Across all nine dataset--view settings, D2-4DGS achieves the highest PSNR, improving by 1.33 dB on average over the best competing method in each setting.
This paper addresses the challenges of dynamic scene synthesis from sparse-view videos. Existing methods employ geometric priors, adaptive optimization, or density-control strategies to improve 4D Gaussian modeling under sparse observations. However, they cannot fundamentally resolve the ill-posed problem caused by insufficient observations and missing scene information. Moreover, sparse-view 4D Gaussian Splatting (4DGS) often suffers from poor geometric initialization: with only a few input views, COLMAP typically reconstructs sparse and incomplete point clouds, leaving large scene regions without sufficient Gaussian support and making them difficult to recover through subsequent optimization. To address these limitations, we propose a novel iterative refinement framework based on a video diffusion model to improve the completeness and consistency of dynamic 4D scenes. Specifically, we first estimate multi-view depth maps and fuse them into dense point clouds to provide more complete geometric initialization for a dynamic 4DGS representation. We then employ a pretrained video restoration model to refine sequences rendered along novel camera trajectories at different time steps. The restored sequences serve as pseudo-supervision to regularize and iteratively refine the 4DGS representation. Experiments on a widely used benchmark dataset demonstrate that our method substantially outperforms existing baselines, achieving nearly a 2 dB PSNR improvement over the previous best-performing method.
Haitao Huang, Shenghao Zhao, Boyuan Tian +7
Goertek Alpha Labs Shanghai, China · Singapore Institute of Technology Singapore, Singapore · Goertek Alpha Labs Santa Clara, USA +1
Learning a 4D scene representation from a single monocular video that supports dynamic novel-view synthesis while maintaining faithful geometry over time remains challenging. Dynamic Gaussian Splatting achieves strong rendering performance through photometric optimization, yet does not explicitly enforce multi-view geometric consistency. In contrast, 3D foundation models recover coherent scene geometry and camera motion, but their point-based outputs are not designed for photorealistic rendering. We propose Ground4D, a geometry-grounded framework built on two stages. First, we perform geometry initialization via 3D foundation models, leveraging VGGT in a training-free manner to reconstruct multi-view-consistent 3D geometry and camera poses from monocular video. The recovered geometry provides a structured and reliable initialization for dynamic Gaussian representations. Second, we conduct geometry-consistency-aware refinement via dynamic Gaussian Splatting, optimizing the representation through differentiable rendering while maintaining multi-view geometric consistency across both observed and synthesized viewpoints. Furthermore, Ground4D inherently models the continuous 4D dynamics of the scene, naturally supporting rendering at arbitrary timestamps. By integrating foundation-level geometric priors into dynamic Gaussian optimization, Ground4D achieves stronger reconstruction fidelity and rendering performance, underscoring the role of geometry-grounded constraints in robust 4D scene modeling.
Qing Zhao, Weijian Deng, Pengxu Wei +1
School of Computer Science and Engineering, Sun Yat-sen University, China · Tsinghua Shenzhen International Graduate School, Tsinghua University, China