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LUCE VS SHARP · APPLE IMAGE-TO-3D
Two Apple papers, one phrase—“image to 3D”—and very different goals. SHARP answers “what does this photo look like from slightly to the left?”; Luce answers “give me this object as an asset I can light in a game engine.”
| Feature | SHARP | Luce |
|---|---|---|
| Input | One photo of a scene | One image of an object |
| Output | Metric 3D Gaussian scene (.ply) for real-time nearby views | Relightable PBR Gaussians (albedo, metallic-roughness, normals) + optional textured mesh |
| Relighting | No — lighting is baked into the photo | Yes |
| Viewpoint range | Nearby viewpoints; unseen regions are not reconstructed | Full object asset intended for arbitrary views |
| Reported speed | Under 1 s on a standard GPU (Apple) | Not the headline metric; quality results on Toys4K |
| Code and weights | Public: apple/ml-sharp (predict on CPU, CUDA or MPS; render needs CUDA) | Not confirmed as released at the time of checking |
| Paper | arXiv 2512.10685 (Dec 2025) | arXiv 2608.23943 (Aug 2026) |
Checked 2026-09-17
Decision summary
- Use SHARP today for 3D-photo and parallax effects from ordinary photos; the CLI is on this site.
- Watch Luce for product, AR and game assets that must respond to new lighting.
- They are complementary, not competitors: scene reconstruction versus asset generation.
Choose SHARP when
- You have a photo of a place, not an isolated object
- You need results now on a Mac (MPS) or CUDA GPU
- Nearby-view parallax is enough
Choose Luce when
- You need PBR materials for a renderer or game engine
- The asset will be seen from many angles under new lights
- You can wait for an official release
How to read this table
SHARP’s speed and Luce’s quality numbers come from different papers and tasks; they are listed to describe each model, not to rank one above the other.
Questions
Can I view SHARP output in the browser?
Yes—SHARP writes standard 3D Gaussian .ply files that open in web-based Gaussian splat viewers. Generation itself runs locally with the official CLI.
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