This is the official repository for the paper:
ShadowDraw: From Any Object to Shadow–Drawing Compositional Art

Authors: Rundong Luo, Noah Snavely, Wei-Chiu Ma (Cornell University)

First, create a conda environment and install the dependencies:

git clone https://github.com/red-fairy/ShadowDraw.git
cd ShadowDraw
conda env create -f environment.yml

Then, install Blender 4.3.2 following the instructions here, unzip it, and specify the path to the Blender executable in the blender_path argument of the main.py script.

First, download the LoRA weights for the line drawing generation model from HuggingFace:

huggingface-cli download RedFairy/Flux-ShadowDraw-LoRA --local-dir ./checkpoints

Then, prepare your 3D object file in .obj, .glb, or .ply format, and run the following command:

python scripts/launch.py --object_filepaths PATH_TO_OBJECT_FILE \
    --save_name SAVE_NAME \
    --output_root OUTPUT_ROOT \
    --optimize_object_params

To accelerate the generation process, you can remove --optimize_object_params and instead add --sample_distribution. This will fix the azimuths and fit a distribution of object internal rotations with respect to fractal dimension and sample internal rotations accordingly.

To add gravity to the object, add --use_gravity. If specified, the object will be first animated by gravity to find a stable pose and then rendered.

For multi-object compositions, you can use the following command:

python scripts/launch.py --object_filepaths PATH_TO_OBJECT_FILES \
    --save_name SAVE_NAME \
    --output_root OUTPUT_ROOT \
    --sample_distribution

Here, PATH_TO_OBJECT_FILES should be a space-separated list of .obj, .glb, or .ply files.

For user-specified subject, add --user_character CHARACTER_NAME and --system_prompt_path system_prompts/prompt_proposal_user.txt.

If you find this work useful, please consider citing:

@article{luo2025shadowdraw,
  title={ShadowDraw: From Any Object to Shadow–Drawing Compositional Art},
  author={Luo, Rundong and Snavely, Noah and Ma, Wei-Chiu},
  journal={arXiv preprint arXiv:2512.05110},
  year={2025}   
}

The shadow-drawing concept is inspired by the work of Belgium artist Vincent Bal, whose playful works reveal how the cast shadows of everyday objects can seamlessly complete drawn elements. Please refer to his Instagram page for more fantastic results.