README.md

metadata

license: cc-by-2.0
pipeline_tag: text-to-image

ShadowDraw: From Any Object to Shadow–Drawing Compositional Art

This repository contains the models and code for ShadowDraw, a framework that transforms ordinary 3D objects into shadow-drawing compositional art. Given a 3D object, the system predicts scene parameters, including object pose and lighting, together with a partial line drawing, such that the cast shadow completes the drawing into a recognizable image.

• Paper: ShadowDraw: From Any Object to Shadow-Drawing Compositional Art
• Project Page: https://red-fairy.github.io/ShadowDraw/
• Code: https://github.com/Red-Fairy/ShadowDraw

🔧 Installation

First, create a conda environment and install the dependencies:

git clone https://github.com/red-fairy/ShadowDraw.git
cd ShadowDraw
conda env create -f environment.yml

Then, install Blender 4.3.2 following the instructions here, unzip it, and specify the path to the Blender executable in the blender_path argument of the main.py script.

🎨 Generate Your Own Shadow-Drawing Art

Shadow-Drawing Art from a Single Object

First, download the LoRA weights for the line drawing generation model from HuggingFace:

huggingface-cli download RedFairy/Flux-ShadowDraw-LoRA --local-dir ./checkpoints

Then, prepare your 3D object file in .obj, .glb, or .ply format, and run the following command:

python scripts/launch.py --object_filepaths PATH_TO_OBJECT_FILE \
    --save_name SAVE_NAME \
    --output_root OUTPUT_ROOT \
    --optimize_object_params

To accelerate the generation process, you can remove --optimize_object_params and instead add --sample_distribution. This will fix the azimuths and fit a distribution of object internal rotations with respect to fractal dimension and sample internal rotations accordingly.

To add gravity to the object, add --use_gravity. If specified, the object will be first animated by gravity to find a stable pose and then rendered.

Shadow-Drawing Art from Multiple Objects

For multi-object compositions, you can use the following command:

python scripts/launch.py --object_filepaths PATH_TO_OBJECT_FILES \
    --save_name SAVE_NAME \
    --output_root OUTPUT_ROOT \
    --sample_distribution

Here, PATH_TO_OBJECT_FILES should be a space-separated list of .obj, .glb, or .ply files.

For user-specified subject, add --user_character CHARACTER_NAME and --system_prompt_path system_prompts/prompt_proposal_user.txt.

📊 Citation

If you find this work useful, please consider citing:

@article{luo2025shadowdraw,
  title={ShadowDraw: From Any Object to Shadow–Drawing Compositional Art},
  author={Luo, Rundong and Snavely, Noah and Ma, Wei-Chiu},
  journal={arXiv preprint arXiv:2512.05110},
  year={2025}   
}