ShadowDraw: From Any Object to Shadow-Drawing Compositional Art

TL;DR

ShadowDraw is a novel framework that converts 3D objects into shadow-based artistic line drawings by optimizing scene parameters and using shadow-guided line generation, enabling diverse and realistic shadow-drawing art.

Contribution

It introduces a comprehensive pipeline for transforming 3D objects into shadow-drawing art, integrating scene optimization, shadow-guided line drawing, and automatic evaluation, extending to complex scenes and animations.

Findings

Produces compelling shadow drawings from various 3D inputs

Extends to multi-object scenes and animations

Demonstrates practical real-world applications

Abstract

We introduce ShadowDraw, a framework that transforms ordinary 3D objects into shadow-drawing compositional art. Given a 3D object, our 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. To this end, we optimize scene configurations to reveal meaningful shadows, employ shadow strokes to guide line drawing generation, and adopt automatic evaluation to enforce shadow-drawing coherence and visual quality. Experiments show that ShadowDraw produces compelling results across diverse inputs, from real-world scans and curated datasets to generative assets, and naturally extends to multi-object scenes, animations, and physical deployments. Our work provides a practical pipeline for creating shadow-drawing art and broadens the design space of computational visual art, bridging the gap between algorithmic design and artistic storytelling. Check out our project page https://red-fairy.github.io/ShadowDraw/ for more results and an end-to-end real-world demonstration of our pipeline!