In 2023, computer vision moved from seeing images to understanding, generating, and controlling them. Segment Anything turned segmentation into a general zero-shot capability, ControlNet made diffusion models precisely controllable, and 3D Gaussian Splatting challenged NeRF with real-time rendering. CVPR received more than 9,000 submissions and ICCV more than 8,000 as both conferences returned to in-person events.
In 2024, 3D Gaussian Splatting took over 3D reconstruction, video generation moved from research toward products, and vision-language models spread into specialized domains. CVPR received a record 11,500-plus submissions; its Best Papers were Google Research's Generative Image Dynamics and the UCSD/Google collaboration Rich Human Feedback for Text-to-Image Generation. ECCV gave its Best Paper award to Columbia's Minimalist Vision with Freeform Pixels, an unconventional return to the physics of optics.
The dominant paradigm in 3D generation in 2026 is video diffusion feeding feed-forward 3D reconstruction, and Lyra 2.0 is the flagship of that line. But three Best Papers at CVPR 2026 point at what comes next: SAM 3D brings foundation-model-scale object reconstruction, D4RT rebuilds dynamic 4D scenes in seconds from a unified transformer, and O-Voxel replaces Gaussians with structured latents. 3DGS still rules, but surface primitives are challenging it, and pixel-space diffusion is pushing back against latent space.