arXiv subjects

Nina Vesseron

Publications and source records attributed to Nina Vesseron.

5 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2026

GradRig: Differentiable Weights for Skinned Gaussian Splat Deformation

Skinned deformation is a common framework to turn a 3D shape from its rest pose into a dynamic pose through the deformation of a coarser kinematic structure, called rig. When applied to a 3D mesh, this rig only needs to displace vertices to deform the polygons that connect them. However, when deforming 3D Gaussian Splats, which do not provide connectivity information, rigidly transforming points is not enough to prevent the creation of holes when stretching shapes. In this paper, we use the spatial gradient of skinning weights to provide a full mesh-free deformation pipeline for Gaussian Splats, that more accurately stretches splats while remaining fully compatible with real-time rendering capabilities, which we demonstrate in a WebGL viewer. We present how we evaluate these gradients when the user creates the rig structure and propose an optional adaptive resampling scheme to split up splats that still produce artifacts.

cs.GR↗

arXiv2026

On the Wasserstein Geodesic Principal Component Analysis of probability measures

This paper focuses on Geodesic Principal Component Analysis (GPCA) on a collection of probability distributions using the Otto-Wasserstein geometry. The goal is to identify geodesic curves in the space of probability measures that best capture the modes of variation of the underlying dataset. We first address the case of a collection of Gaussian distributions, and show how to lift the computations in the space of invertible linear maps. For the more general setting of absolutely continuous probability measures, we leverage a novel approach to parameterizing geodesics in Wasserstein space with neural networks. Finally, we compare to classical tangent PCA through various examples and provide illustrations on real-world datasets.

stat.ML↗

arXiv2025

On a Neural Implementation of Brenier's Polar Factorization

In 1991, Brenier proved a theorem that generalizes the polar decomposition for square matrices -- factored as PSD $\times$ unitary -- to any vector field $F:\mathbb{R}^d\rightarrow \mathbb{R}^d$. The theorem, known as the polar factorization theorem, states that any field $F$ can be recovered as the composition of the gradient of a convex function $u$ with a measure-preserving map $M$, namely $F=\nabla u \circ M$. We propose a practical implementation of this far-reaching theoretical result, and explore possible uses within machine learning. The theorem is closely related to optimal transport (OT) theory, and we borrow from recent advances in the field of neural optimal transport to parameterize the potential $u$ as an input convex neural network. The map $M$ can be either evaluated pointwise using $u^*$, the convex conjugate of $u$, through the identity $M=\nabla u^* \circ F$, or learned as an auxiliary network. Because $M$ is, in general, not injective, we consider the additional task of estimating the ill-posed inverse map that can approximate the pre-image measure $M^{-1}$ using a stochastic generator. We illustrate possible applications of Brenier's polar factorization to non-convex optimization problems, as well as sampling of densities that are not log-concave.

stat.ML↗

arXiv2025

Sample and Map from a Single Convex Potential: Generation using Conjugate Moment Measures

The canonical approach in generative modeling is to split model fitting into two blocks: define first how to sample noise (e.g. Gaussian) and choose next what to do with it (e.g. using a single map or flows). We explore in this work an alternative route that ties sampling and mapping. We find inspiration in moment measures, a result that states that for any measure $ρ$, there exists a unique convex potential $u$ such that $ρ=\nabla u \sharp e^{-u}$. While this does seem to tie effectively sampling (from log-concave distribution $e^{-u}$) and action (pushing particles through $\nabla u$), we observe on simple examples (e.g., Gaussians or 1D distributions) that this choice is ill-suited for practical tasks. We study an alternative factorization, where $ρ$ is factorized as $\nabla w^*\sharp e^{-w}$, where $w^*$ is the convex conjugate of a convex potential $w$. We call this approach conjugate moment measures, and show far more intuitive results on these examples. Because $\nabla w^*$ is the Monge map between the log-concave distribution $e^{-w}$ and $ρ$, we rely on optimal transport solvers to propose an algorithm to recover $w$ from samples of $ρ$, and parameterize $w$ as an input-convex neural network. We also address the common sampling scenario in which the density of $ρ$ is known only up to a normalizing constant, and propose an algorithm to learn $w$ in this setting.

stat.ML↗

arXiv2020

Deep Neural Networks Are Congestion Games: From Loss Landscape to Wardrop Equilibrium and Beyond

The theoretical analysis of deep neural networks (DNN) is arguably among the most challenging research directions in machine learning (ML) right now, as it requires from scientists to lay novel statistical learning foundations to explain their behaviour in practice. While some success has been achieved recently in this endeavour, the question on whether DNNs can be analyzed using the tools from other scientific fields outside the ML community has not received the attention it may well have deserved. In this paper, we explore the interplay between DNNs and game theory (GT), and show how one can benefit from the classic readily available results from the latter when analyzing the former. In particular, we consider the widely studied class of congestion games, and illustrate their intrinsic relatedness to both linear and non-linear DNNs and to the properties of their loss surface. Beyond retrieving the state-of-the-art results from the literature, we argue that our work provides a very promising novel tool for analyzing the DNNs and support this claim by proposing concrete open problems that can advance significantly our understanding of DNNs when solved.

cs.LG↗