---
license: cc-by-4.0
viewer: false
pretty_name: "FutureSurf: Future Rendering != Future Surface"
task_categories:
  - image-to-3d
tags:
  - 3d-reconstruction
  - 4d-reconstruction
  - dynamic-scene
  - gaussian-splatting
  - surface-reconstruction
  - mesh
  - synthetic
  - monocular
  - benchmark
  - future-prediction
size_categories:
  - 1K<n<10K
---

# FutureSurf: Future Rendering ≠ Future Surface

A benchmark for **future-time surface reconstruction**: train on monocular frames up to time *T*
(the observed 75%), then score the reconstructed **surface mesh** at held-out future times *t > T*
(the remaining 25%).

- 📄 **Paper:** [arXiv:2607.21471](https://arxiv.org/abs/2607.21471)
- 💻 **Code / toolkit:** [github.com/Ricky-S/futuresurf](https://github.com/Ricky-S/futuresurf)

## Files

| file | size | contents |
|------|------|----------|
| `futuresurf_dataset.zip` | ~0.9 GB | 8 controlled motions: renders + per-frame **GT** meshes + transforms + init points |
| `croissant.jsonld` | — | Croissant 1.0 metadata |

## Download

```python
from huggingface_hub import hf_hub_download
hf_hub_download(repo_id="rickyshi/futuresurf", filename="futuresurf_dataset.zip", repo_type="dataset", local_dir=".")
```

## Layout (per motion, after unzipping)

```
dataset/controlled/<motion>/
  images/                r_0.png … r_199.png      200 renders, 800×800 RGBA
  mesh_gt/               <motion>0.ply … 199.ply  200 GT meshes (vertex-colored PLY)
  transforms_train.json  observed: 150 frames (time ≤ 0.75)
  transforms_test.json   future:    50 frames (time > 0.75)
  points3d.ply           init point cloud (Gaussian backbones)
```

## Protocol

Train on `transforms_train.json` (observed 75%), then score the extracted mesh against `mesh_gt`
at the future frames. Metric: Chamfer distance on vertex positions. See the paper and toolkit for
the full protocol and scoring code.

## The 8 controlled motions

**Surface-changing:**
- `wave` — periodic
- `compound` — periodic + trend
- `stretch` — monotonic
- `bulge` — localized
- `accel` — accelerating

**Falsification controls:**
- `twist` — surface-invariant
- `rotate` — rigid rotation
- `stop` — freezing

## Citation

If you use FutureSurf, please cite:
```bibtex
@article{shi2026futuresurf,
  title   = {Future Rendering $\neq$ Future Surface: A Benchmark and Dataset for Dynamic Surface Reconstruction Beyond the Observed Window},
  author  = {Shi, Yukun and Gong, Minglun},
  journal = {arXiv preprint arXiv:2607.21471},
  year    = {2026}
}
```

## License

**CC BY 4.0**