SharpNet: Enhancing MLPs to Represent Functions with Controlled Non-differentiability

Multi-layer perceptrons (MLPs) are a standard tool for learning and function approximation, but they inherently yield outputs that are globally smooth. As a result, they struggle to represent functions that are continuous yet deliberately non-differentiable (i.e., with prescribed $C^0$ sharp features) without relying on ad hoc post-processing. We present SharpNet, a modified MLP architecture capable of encoding functions with user-defined sharp features by enriching the network with an auxiliary feature function, which is defined as the solution to a Poisson equation with jump Neumann boundary conditions. It is evaluated via an efficient local integral that is fully differentiable with respect to the feature locations, enabling our method to jointly optimize both the feature locations and the MLP parameters to recover the target functions/models. The $C^0$-continuity of SharpNet is precisely controllable, ensuring $C^0$-continuity at the feature locations and smoothness elsewhere. We validate SharpNet on 2D problems and 3D CAD model reconstruction, and compare it against several state-of-the-art baselines. In both types of tasks, SharpNet accurately recovers sharp edges and corners while maintaining smooth behavior away from those features, whereas existing methods tend to smooth out gradient discontinuities. Both qualitative and quantitative evaluations highlight the benefits of our approach.

Voronoi-Assisted Diffusion for Computing Unsigned Distance Fields from Unoriented Points

Unsigned Distance Fields (UDFs) provide a flexible representation for 3D shapes with arbitrary topology, including open and closed surfaces, orientable and non-orientable geometries, and non-manifold structures. While recent neural approaches have shown promise in learning UDFs, they often suffer from numerical instability, high computational cost, and limited controllability. We present a lightweight, network-free method, Voronoi-Assisted Diffusion (VAD), for computing UDFs directly from unoriented point clouds. Our approach begins by assigning bi-directional normals to input points, guided by two Voronoi-based geometric criteria encoded in an energy function for optimal alignment. The aligned normals are then diffused to form an approximate UDF gradient field, which is subsequently integrated to recover the final UDF. Experiments demonstrate that VAD robustly handles watertight and open surfaces, as well as complex non-manifold and non-orientable geometries, while remaining computationally efficient and stable.

From Transparent to Opaque: Rethinking Neural Implicit Surfaces with $α$-NeuS

Traditional 3D shape reconstruction techniques from multi-view images, such as structure from motion and multi-view stereo, primarily focus on opaque surfaces. Similarly, recent advances in neural radiance fields and its variants also primarily address opaque objects, encountering difficulties with the complex lighting effects caused by transparent materials. This paper introduces $\alpha$-NeuS, a new method for simultaneously reconstructing thin transparent objects and opaque objects based on neural implicit surfaces (NeuS). Our method leverages the observation that transparent surfaces induce local extreme values in the learned distance fields during neural volumetric rendering, contrasting with opaque surfaces that align with zero level sets. Traditional iso-surfacing algorithms such as marching cubes, which rely on fixed iso-values, are ill-suited for this data. We address this by taking the absolute value of the distance field and developing an optimization method that extracts level sets corresponding to both non-negative local minima and zero iso-values. We prove that the reconstructed surfaces are unbiased for both transparent and opaque objects. To validate our approach, we construct a benchmark that includes both real-world and synthetic scenes, demonstrating its practical utility and effectiveness. Our data and code are publicly available at https://github.com/728388808/alpha-NeuS.