Posted on X by Bilawal Sidhu Depth Anything 3 proves most 3D vision research has been overengineering the problem. Vanilla DINOv2 transformer + depth-ray pairs crushes SOTA by 44% on pose, 25% on geometry. One approach for SOTA monocular depth, multi-view geometry, pose estimation, and novel view synthesis After a year of team work, we're thrilled to introduce Depth Anything 3 (DA3)!
Aiming for human-like spatial perception, DA3 extends monocular depth estimation to any-view scenarios, including single images, multi-view images, and video.
In pursuit of minimal modeling, DA3
Research Notes on Depth Anything 3 (DA3)
Overview
Depth Anything 3 (DA3) introduces a novel approach to 3D vision tasks, achieving state-of-the-art performance across monocular depth estimation, multi-view geometry, pose estimation, and novel view synthesis. The research demonstrates that simpler architectures, such as the vanilla DINOv2 transformer combined with depth-ray pairs, can outperform more complex models by significant margins (44% improvement on pose estimation and 25% on geometry). DA3 aims to replicate human-like spatial perception, extending monocular depth estimation to any-view scenarios, including single images, multi-view images, and video.
Technical Analysis
DA3 leverages a minimal modeling approach, utilizing a vanilla DINOv2 transformer paired with depth-ray pairs to achieve superior results. This simplicity contrasts with the overengineering often seen in 3D vision research (Result #5). The approach is self-supervised, learning directly from video inputs to predict depths across any number of views (Result #2).
The architecture's effectiveness lies in its ability to generalize across different input modalities. By training on video data, DA3 can handle single images, multi-view setups, and even novel view synthesis with high accuracy (Result #1). The use of depth-ray pairs allows the model to capture spatial relationships more efficiently than traditional methods, contributing significantly to its performance gains.
Implementation Details
The implementation of DA3 is built on open-source frameworks and tools:
- Hugging Face: The base model (DA3-BASE) is available on Hugging Face (Result #3).
- PyTorch: The model likely uses PyTorch for its transformer architecture, given the prevalence of DINOv2 implementations in PyTorch.
- Loss Functions: The implementation details include specific loss functions tailored for depth estimation and pose regression (Result #1).
Related Technologies
DA3 builds upon and competes with several existing technologies:
- DINOv2: The vanilla DINOv2 transformer is a key component of DA3's architecture (Result #5).
- Pose Estimation Frameworks: DA3 outperforms existing pose estimation frameworks by 44% on average (Result #1).
- Multi-View Geometry: The approach extends monocular depth estimation to multi-view scenarios, addressing a gap in existing research (Result #2).
Key Takeaways
- DA3 achieves state-of-the-art performance using a simplified architecture: vanilla DINOv2 transformer + depth-ray pairs (Result #5).
- The use of video data for self-supervised learning enables generalization across any-view scenarios (Result #2).
- DA3 significantly outperforms existing methods on pose estimation (44% improvement) and geometry tasks (25% improvement) (Result #1).
This research highlights the importance of simplicity in model design and challenges the trend of overcomplexity in 3D vision tasks.
Further Research
Here’s a 'Further Reading' section based solely on the provided search results:
- [2511.10647] Depth Anything 3: Recovering the Visual Space from Any Views - arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2511.10647
- Official Project Website: Depth Anything 3
- Hugging Face Model Page: DA3-BASE
- OpenReview Forum: Depth Anything 3
- Twitter Thread on Impact of Depth Anything 3: https://www.threads.com/@bilawal.ai/post/DRFBNELjwPT/video-depth-anything-3-proves-most-3d-vision-research-has-been-overengineering-the-pro