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Awesome-Sketch-Synthesis

Awesome

A collection of papers about Sketch Synthesis (Generation). Mainly focus on stroke-level vector sketch synthesis.

Feel free to create a PR or an issue.

examples

Outlines

0. Survey

Paper Source Code/Project Link
Deep Learning for Free-Hand Sketch: A Survey TPAMI 2022 [code]

1. Datasets

Here Vector strokes means having svg data. With photos means having the photo-sketch paired data.

Level Dataset Source Vector strokes With photos Notes
Characters Omniglot ✔️ ❌ Alphabets characters
KanjiVG ✔️ ❌ Chinese characters
Kuzushiji ❌ ❌ Japanese characters
Icon FIGR-8-SVG ✔️ ❌ Icons with text descriptions
Systematic Symbol SketchIME ACM MM 2023 ✔️ ❌ Systematic sketches with semantic annotations
Instance-level TU-Berlin SIGGRAPH 2012 ✔️ ❌ Multi-category hand sketches
Sketchy SIGGRAPH 2016 ✔️ ✔️ Multi-category photo-sketch paired
QuickDraw ICLR 2018 ✔️ ❌ Multi-category hand sketches
QMUL-Shoe-Chair-V2 CVPR 2016 ✔️ ✔️ Only two categories
Sketch Perceptual Grouping (SPG) ECCV 2018 ✔️ ❌ With part-level semantic segmentation information
FaceX AAAI 2019 ✔️ ❌ Labeled facial sketches
Creative Sketch ICLR 2021 ✔️ ❌ With annotated part segmentation
ImageNet-Sketch NeurIPS 2019 ❌ ❌ 50 images for each of the 1000 ImageNet classes
SEVA NeurIPS 2023 ✔️ ✔️ 90K human-generated sketches that vary in detail
Sketchtopia CVPR 2025 ✔️ ❌
Scene-level SketchyScene ECCV 2018 ❌ ✔️ With semantic/instance segmentation information
CMPlaces TPAMI 2018 ❌ ✔️ Cross-modal scene dataset
Context-Skecth Expressive 2018 ❌ ✔️ Context-based scene sketches for co-classification
SketchyCOCO CVPR 2020 ❌ ✔️ Scene sketch, segmentation and normal images
FS-COCO ECCV 2022 ✔️ ✔️ Scene sketches with text description
SFSD VC 2022 ✔️ ✔️ Completely hand-drawn scene sketches with label annotation
Drawing from photos Photo-Sketching WACV 2019 ✔️ ✔️ ScenePhoto-sketch paired
Tracing-vs-Freehand SIGGRAPH 2021 ✔️ ✔️ Tracings and freehand drawings of images
Drawing from 3D models DifferSketching SIGGRAPH Asia 2022 ✔️ ❌ 3D model-sketch paired, with novice and professional ones
Portrait CUFS TPAMI 2009 ❌ ✔️ Face-sketch pairs
APDrawing CVPR 2019 ❌ ✔️ Portrait-sketch paired
SKSF-A EG 2024 ❌ ✔️ Face-sketch pairs of seven styles
Children's Drawing Amateur Drawings TOG 2023 ❌ ✔️ With character bounding boxes, segmentation masks, and joint location annotations
Rough sketch Da Vinci CGI 2018 ❌ ✔️ Line drawing restoration dataset
Rough Sketch Benchmark SIGGRAPH Asia 2020 ✔️ ✔️ Rough and clean sketch pairs (only for evaluation)
CAD ld3d SIGGRAPH 2008 ❌ ❌ Line Drawings of 3D Shapes
OpenSketch SIGGRAPH Asia 2019 ✔️ ❌ Product Design Sketches
SketchGraphs ICML 2020 Workshop ✔️ ❌ Sketches extracted from real-world CAD models
Fusion 360 Gallery SIGGRAPH 2021 ✔️ ❌ For 'sketch and extrude' designs
FloorPlanCAD ICCV 2021 ✔️ ❌ With instance and semantic annotations
Anime Danbooru2021 / ❌ ✔️ Anime images annotated with tags
DanbooRegion ECCV 2020 ❌ ❌ Anime images with region annotations
Danbooru-Parsing TOG 2023 ❌ ✔️ For anime portrait parsing and anime translation
CreativeFlow+ CVPR 2019 ❌ ✔️ Large densely annotated artistic video dataset
ATD-12K CVPR 2021 ❌ ✔️ Animation frames with flow annotations
AnimeRun NeurIPS 2022 ❌ ✔️ Correspondence dataset for 2D-styled cartoons
AnimeCeleb ECCV 2022 ❌ ❌ Animation head images with pose annotations
PaintBucket-Character CVPR 2024 ❌ ✔️ Animation frames with region annotations
Sakuga-42M (link 2) arxiv 24.05 ❌ ✔️ Cartoon videos with text descriptions and tags
Anita online 2024 ❌ ✔️ Professional hand-drawn cartoon keyframes, with 1080P sketch and color images
MangaSeg CVPR 2025 ❌ ✔️ Manga segmentation annotation

2. Sketch-Synthesis Approaches

1) Semantic Concept-to-sketch

Level Paper Source Code/Project Link
Instance-level A Neural Representation of Sketch Drawings (sketch-rnn) ICLR 2018 [Code] [Project] [Demo]
Sketch-pix2seq: a Model to Generate Sketches of Multiple Categories [Code]
AI-Sketcher : A Deep Generative Model for Producing High-Quality Sketches AAAI 2019 [Project]
Stroke-based sketched symbol reconstruction and segmentation (stroke-rnn) CGA 2019
BézierSketch: A generative model for scalable vector sketches ECCV 2020 [Code]
Pixelor: A Competitive Sketching AI Agent. So you think you can beat me? SIGGRAPH Asia 2020 [Project] [Code]
Creative Sketch Generation ICLR 2021 [Project] [Code]
Computer-Aided Design as Language arxiv 2105
DoodleFormer: Creative Sketch Drawing with Transformers ECCV 2022 [Project] [Code]
SketchKnitter: Vectorized Sketch Generation with Diffusion Models ICLR 2023 [Code]
Self-Organizing a Latent Hierarchy of Sketch Patterns for Controllable Sketch Synthesis TNNLS 2023 [Code]
Scale-Adaptive Diffusion Model for Complex Sketch Synthesis ICLR 2024
SketchEdit: Editing Freehand Sketches at the Stroke-level IJCAI 24 [code]
StrokeFusion: Vector Sketch Generation via Joint Stroke-UDF Encoding and Latent Sequence Diffusion arxiv 25.03
VQ-SGen: A Vector Quantized Stroke Representation for Creative Sketch Generation ICCV 2025 [Webpage]
Generating Sketches in a Hierarchical Auto-Regressive Process for Flexible Sketch Drawing Manipulation at Stroke-Level AAAI 2026 [code]

2) Photo-to-sketch

  • vector image generation
Data type Paper Source Code/Project Link
Facial Style and abstraction in portrait sketching TOG 2013
Instance-level Free-Hand Sketch Synthesis with Deformable Stroke Models IJCV 2017 [Project] [code]
Learning to Sketch with Shortcut Cycle Consistency CVPR 2018 [Code1] [Code2]
Learning Deep Sketch Abstraction CVPR 2018
CLIPasso: Semantically-Aware Object Sketching SIGGRAPH 2022 [Project] [Code]
SwiftSketch: A Diffusion Model for Image-to-Vector Sketch Generation SIGGRAPH 2025 [Project] [Code]
Scene-level Sketch Generation with Drawing Process Guided by Vector Flow and Grayscale AAAI 2021 [Code]
CLIPascene: Scene Sketching with Different Types and Levels of Abstraction ICCV 2023 [Project] [Code]
Learning Realistic Sketching: A Dual-agent Reinforcement Learning Approach ACM MM 2024
Technical Drawings Deep Vectorization of Technical Drawings ECCV 2020 [Project] [code]
  • raster image generation
Type Paper Source Code/Project Link
Facial ArtLine Online demo [Code]
APDrawingGAN: Generating Artistic Portrait Drawings from Face Photos with Hierarchical GANs CVPR 2019 [Code] [Demo]
Unpaired Portrait Drawing Generation via Asymmetric Cycle Mapping CVPR 2020 [Code]
Line Drawings for Face Portraits From Photos Using Global and Local Structure Based GANs TPAMI 2020 [Code]
Quality Metric Guided Portrait Line Drawing Generation from Unpaired Training Data TPAMI 2022 [Code]
Human-Inspired Facial Sketch Synthesis with Dynamic Adaptation ICCV 2023 [Code]
Stylized Face Sketch Extraction via Generative Prior with Limited Data EG 2024 [Code] [Project]
Instance-level Deep Factorised Inverse-Sketching ECCV 2018
Synthesizing human-like sketches from natural images using a conditional convolutional decoder WACV 2020 [Code]
Anime sketchKeras online demo [Code]
LineDistiller online demo [Code]
Anime2Sketch online demo [Code]
Reference Based Sketch Extraction via Attention Mechanism SIGGRAPH Asia 2022 [Code]
DoodleAssist: Progressive Interactive Line Art Generation with Latent Distribution Alignment TVCG 2025 [Code]
Scene-level Photo-Sketching: Inferring Contour Drawings from Images WACV 2019 [Code] [Project]
Learning to generate line drawings that convey geometry and semantics CVPR 2022 [Code] [Project]
Arbitrary Im2Pencil: Controllable Pencil Illustration From Photographs CVPR 2019 [Code]
Semi-supervised reference-based sketch extraction using a contrastive learning SIGGRAPH 2023 [Code] [Project]
MixSA: Training-free Reference-based Sketch Extraction via Mixture-of-Self-Attention TVCG 2024
One-Shot Reference-based Structure-Aware Image to Sketch Synthesis AAAI 2025 [Code]
Stroke2Sketch: Harnessing Stroke Attributes for Training-Free Sketch Generation ICCV 2025 [Code]

3) Text/Attribute-to-sketch

  • raster image generation
Type Paper Source Code/Project Link
Facial Text2Sketch: Learning Face Sketch from Facial Attribute Text ICIP 2018
Scene-level Sketchforme: Composing Sketched Scenes from Text Descriptions for Interactive Applications UIST 2019
Scene-level Scones: Towards Conversational Authoring of Sketches IUI 2020
  • vector image generation
Type Paper Source Code/Project Link
Arbitrary Modern Evolution Strategies for Creativity: Fitting Concrete Images and Abstract Concepts arxiv 21.09 [code] [project]
Arbitrary CLIPDraw: Exploring Text-to-Drawing Synthesis through Language-Image Encoders NeurIPS 2022 [code]
Arbitrary StyleCLIPDraw: Coupling Content and Style in Text-to-Drawing Translation IJCAI 2022 [code]
SVG VectorFusion: Text-to-SVG by Abstracting Pixel-Based Diffusion Models CVPR 2023 [project]
Arbitrary SketchDreamer: Interactive Text-Augmented Creative Sketch Ideation BMVC 2023 [code]
Arbitrary DiffSketcher: Text Guided Vector Sketch Synthesis through Latent Diffusion Models NeurIPS 2023 [project] [code]
Icon IconShop: Text-Based Vector Icon Synthesis with Autoregressive Transformers SIGGRAPH Asia 2023 [project]
SVG Text-Guided Vector Graphics Customization SIGGRAPH Asia 2023 [project]
Arbitrary Text-based Vector Sketch Editing with Image Editing Diffusion Prior ICME 2024 [code]
SVG SVGDreamer: Text Guided SVG Generation with Diffusion Model CVPR 2024 [project] [code]
SVG SVGDreamer++: Advancing Editability and Diversity in Text-Guided SVG Generation TPAMI 2025 [code]
SVG NIVeL: Neural Implicit Vector Layers for Text-to-Vector Generation CVPR 2024 [project]
SVG Text-to-Vector Generation with Neural Path Representation SIGGRAPH 2024 [project]
Arbitrary SVGCraft: Beyond Single Object Text-to-SVG Synthesis with Comprehensive Canvas Layout arxiv 24.04 [code]
SVG VectorPainter: A Novel Approach to Stylized Vector Graphics Synthesis with Vectorized Strokes ICME 2025 [code] [webpage]
SVG Chat2SVG: Vector Graphics Generation with Large Language Models and Image Diffusion Models CVPR 2025 [webpage]
Arbitrary SketchAgent: Language-Driven Sequential Sketch Generation CVPR 2025 [code] [webpage]
SVG SVGBuilder: Component-Based Colored SVG Generation with Text-Guided Autoregressive Transformers AAAI 2025 [webpage]
SVG SVGFusion: Scalable Text-to-SVG Generation via Vector Space Diffusion arxiv 24.12 [webpage] [code]
SVG Empowering LLMs to Understand and Generate Complex Vector Graphics CVPR 2025 [webpage] [code]
SVG StarVector: Generating Scalable Vector Graphics Code from Images and Text CVPR 2025 [webpage] [code]
SVG NeuralSVG: An Implicit Representation for Text-to-Vector Generation ICCV 2025 [webpage] [code]
SVG LayerTracer: Cognitive-Aligned Layered SVG Synthesis via Diffusion Transformer arxiv 25.02 [code]
SVG OmniSVG: A Unified Scalable Vector Graphics Generation Model NeurIPS 2025 [code] [webpage]
SVG Style Customization of Text-to-Vector Generation with Image Diffusion Priors SIGGRAPH 2025 [code] [webpage]
SVG LayerPeeler: Autoregressive Peeling for Layer-wise Image Vectorization SIGGRAPH Asia 2025 [webpage]
SVG Reason-SVG: Hybrid Reward RL for Aha-Moments in Vector Graphics Generation arxiv 25.05
SVG SVGenius: Benchmarking LLMs in SVG Understanding, Editing and Generation arxiv 25.06 [webpage] [code]
SVG SVGen: Interpretable Vector Graphics Generation with Large Language Models MM 2025 [code]
SVG UniSVG: A Unified Dataset for Vector Graphic Understanding and Generation with Multimodal Large Language Models MM 2025 [webpage]
SVG SVGThinker: Instruction-Aligned and Reasoning-Driven Text-to-SVG Generation MM 2025
Arbitrary SketchRefiner: Text-Guided Sketch Refinement Through Latent Diffusion Models TVCG 2025
Arbitrary AutoSketch: VLM-assisted Style-Aware Vector Sketch Completion SIGGRAPH Asia 2025 [webpage]
SVG InternSVG: Towards Unified SVG Tasks with Multimodal Large Language Models arxiv 25.10 [webpage] [code]
SVG RoboSVG: A Unified Framework for Interactive SVG Generation with Multi-modal Guidance arxiv 25.10

4) 3D shape-to-sketch

Paper Source Code/Project Link
DeepShapeSketch : Generating hand drawing sketches from 3D objects IJCNN 2019
Neural Contours: Learning to Draw Lines from 3D Shapes CVPR 2020 [project] [code]
Cloud2Curve: Generation and Vectorization of Parametric Sketches CVPR 2021 [project]
Neural Strokes: Stylized Line Drawing of 3D Shapes ICCV 2021 [code]
Learning a Style Space for Interactive Line Drawing Synthesis from Animated 3D Models PG 2022
CAD2Sketch: Generating Concept Sketches from CAD Sequences SIGGRAPH Asia 2022 [project]

5) Art-to-sketch

Here we list sketch synthesis based on other image types, like Manga, line art, rough sketch, etc.

a) Line art

  • Vector-to-Vector
Paper Source Code/Project Link Deep learning?
Closure-aware Sketch Simplification SIGGRAPH Asia 2015 [Project] No
StrokeAggregator: Consolidating Raw Sketches into Artist-Intended Curve Drawings SIGGRAPH 2018 [Project] No
StrokeStrip: Joint Parameterization and Fitting of Stroke Clusters SIGGRAPH 2021 [Project] [code] No
StripMaker: Perception-driven Learned Vector Sketch Consolidation SIGGRAPH 2023 No
Region-Aware Simplification and Stylization of 3D Line Drawings EG 2024 No
  • Raster-to-Vector (a.k.a. Vectorization)
Paper Source Code/Project Link Deep learning?
Topology-Driven Vectorization of Clean Line Drawings TOG 2013 No
Fidelity vs. Simplicity: a Global Approach to Line Drawing Vectorization SIGGRAPH 2016 [Project] No
A Delaunay triangulation based approach for cleaning rough sketches C&G 2018 [Code] No
Semantic Segmentation for Line Drawing Vectorization Using Neural Networks EG 2018 [project] [code] Yes
Deep Line Drawing Vectorization via Line Subdivision and Topology Reconstruction PG 2019 Yes
Inertia-based Fast Vectorization of Line Drawings PG 2019 No
Vectorization of Line Drawings via Polyvector Fields TOG 2019 [Code] No
Integer-Grid Sketch Simplification and Vectorization SGP 2020 [Project] [Code] No
Deep Vectorization of Technical Drawings ECCV 2020 [project] [code] Yes
General Virtual Sketching Framework for Vector Line Art SIGGRAPH 2021 [project] [code] Yes
Keypoint-Driven Line Drawing Vectorization via PolyVector Flow SIGGRAPH Asia 2021 [project] Hybrid
End-to-end Line Drawing Vectorization AAAI 2022 Yes
Vectorizing Line Drawings of Arbitrary Thickness via Boundary-based Topology Reconstruction CGF 2022 No
Singularity-Free Frame Fields for Line Drawing Vectorization SGP 2023 [code] No
Deep Sketch Vectorization via Implicit Surface Extraction SIGGRAPH 2024 [project] [code] Hybrid
Single-Line Drawing Vectorization CGF 2025 [code] Hybrid

b) Rough sketch simplification / cleanup

  • Datasets and benchmark
Paper Source Code/Project Link
A Benchmark for Rough Sketch Cleanup SIGGRAPH Asia 2020 [Project] [Code]
  • Methods
Paper Source Code/Project Link
Learning to Simplify: Fully Convolutional Networks for Rough Sketch Cleanup SIGGRAPH 2016 [Code] [Project]
Mastering Sketching: Adversarial Augmentation for Structured Prediction SIGGRAPH 2018 [Code] [Project]
Real-Time Data-Driven Interactive Rough Sketch Inking SIGGRAPH 2018 [Code] [Project]
Perceptual-aware Sketch Simplification Based on Integrated VGG Layers TVCG 2019

c) Manga (Comics)

Paper Source Code/Project Link
Deep extraction of manga structural lines SIGGRAPH 2017 [Code]
Manga Filling Style Conversion with Screentone Variational Autoencoder SIGGRAPH Asia 2020 [Project] [Code]
Generating Manga from Illustrations via Mimicking Manga Workflow CVPR 2021 [Project] [Code]
MangaGAN: Unpaired Photo-to-Manga Translation Based on The Methodology of Manga Drawing AAAI 2021
MARVEL: Raster Gray-level Manga Vectorization via Primitive-wise Deep Reinforcement Learning TCSVT 2023
Manga Generation via Layout-controllable Diffusion arxiv 24.12 [code] [webpage]
DiffSensei: Bridging Multi-Modal LLMs and Diffusion Models for Customized Manga Generation CVPR 2025 [code] [webpage]

3. Vector Graphics Generation (2D)

Here we focus on learning-based vector graphics generation without depending on vector training data, and traditional vectorization algorithms.

  • Learning with external black-box (non-differentiable) rendering simulator
Paper Source Code/Project Link
Synthesizing Programs for Images using Reinforced Adversarial Learning ICML 2018 [Code]
Unsupervised Doodling and Painting with Improved SPIRAL arxiv 1910 [Project]
  • Learning with built-in differentiable rendering module
Paper Source Code/Project Link
Neural Image Abstraction Using Long Smoothing B-Splines SIGGRAPH Asia 2025
Layered Image Vectorization via Semantic Simplification CVPR 2025 [webpage] [code]
Inverse Painting: Reconstructing The Painting Process SIGGRAPH Asia 2024 [code]
ProcessPainter: Learning to draw from sequence data SIGGRAPH Asia 2024 [code]
Segmentation-guided Layer-wise Image Vectorization with Gradient Fills ECCV 2024
Towards High-fidelity Artistic Image Vectorization via Texture-Encapsulated Shape Parameterization CVPR 2024
SuperSVG: Superpixel-based Scalable Vector Graphics Synthesis CVPR 2024 [code]
Vector Graphics Generation via Mutually Impulsed Dual-domain Diffusion CVPR 2024
Optimize and Reduce: A Top-Down Approach for Image Vectorization AAAI 2024 [code]
Segmentation-Based Parametric Painting arxiv 23.11 [code] [project]
Editable Image Geometric Abstraction via Neural Primitive Assembly ICCV 2023
Stroke-based Neural Painting and Stylization with Dynamically Predicted Painting Region ACM MM 2023 [code]
Intelli-Paint: Towards Developing More Human-Intelligible Painting Agents ECCV 2022 [project]
Towards Layer-wise Image Vectorization CVPR 2022 [code] [project]
Paint Transformer: Feed Forward Neural Painting with Stroke Prediction ICCV 2021 [code]
Combining Semantic Guidance and Deep Reinforcement Learning For Generating Human Level Paintings CVPR 2021 [code]
Rethinking Style Transfer: From Pixels to Parameterized Brushstrokes CVPR 2021 [code]
Im2Vec: Synthesizing Vector Graphics without Vector Supervision CVPR 2021 [Project] [code]
Stylized Neural Painting CVPR 2021 [Code] [project]
Painting Many Pasts: Synthesizing Time Lapse Videos of Paintings CVPR 2020 [Code] [project]
Learning to Paint With Model-based Deep Reinforcement Learning ICCV 2019 [code]
Strokenet: A neural painting environment ICLR 2019 [Code]
Neural Painters: A learned differentiable constraint for generating brushstroke paintings arxiv 1904 [Code]
Learning to Sketch with Deep Q Networks and Demonstrated Strokes arxiv 1810
Unsupervised Image to Sequence Translation with Canvas-Drawer Networks arxiv 1809
  • Vectorization
Paper Source Code/Project Link
Depixelizing pixel art SIGGRAPH 2011
Perception-Driven Semi-Structured Boundary Vectorization SIGGRAPH 2018 [Webpage]
PolyFit: Perception-aligned Vectorization of Raster Clip-art via Intermediate Polygonal Fitting SIGGRAPH 2020 [Webpage] [Code]
ClipGen: A Deep Generative Model for Clipart Vectorization and Synthesis TVCG 2021
TCB-Spline-Based Image Vectorization TOG 2022
Image vectorization and editing via linear gradient layer decomposition SIGGRAPH 2023
Image Vectorization via Gradient Reconstruction EG 2025

4. Vector Graphics Generation (3D)

Paper Source Code/Project Link
3Doodle: Compact Abstraction of Objects with 3D Strokes SIGGRAPH 2024 [code]
Diff3DS: Generating View-Consistent 3D Sketch via Differentiable Curve Rendering ICLR 2025 [webpage]
Recovering Dynamic 3D Sketches from Videos CVPR 2025 [webpage]
Empowering Vector Graphics with Consistently Arbitrary Viewing and View-dependent Visibility CVPR 2025 [code]
ViewCraft3D: High-Fidelity and View-Consistent 3D Vector Graphics Synthesis NeurIPS 2025 [webpage]
  • 3D Edges
Paper Source Code/Project Link
3D Neural Edge Reconstruction CVPR 2024 [code] [webpage]
EdgeGaussians - 3D Edge Mapping via Gaussian Splatting WACV 2025 [code]
SketchSplat: 3D Edge Reconstruction via Differentiable Multi-view Sketch Splatting ICCV 2025 [code] [webpage]
  • Wire Art
Paper Source Code/Project Link
Wired Perspectives: Multi-View Wire Art Embraces Generative AI CVPR 2024 [code] [webpage]
Fabricable 3D Wire Art SIGGRAPH 2024
WIR3D: Visually-Informed and Geometry-Aware 3D Shape Abstraction ICCV 2025 [webpage] [code]
CLR-Wire: Towards Continuous Latent Representations for 3D Curve Wireframe Generation SIGGRAPH 2025 [webpage] [code]

5. Vector Graphics Generation (4D)

Paper Source Code/Project Link
4-Doodle: Text to 3D Sketches that Move! arxiv 25.10

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📚 A collection of papers about Sketch Synthesis (Generation).

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