What is Neural Radiance Fields (NeRF) and how does it reconstruct 3D scenes from 2D images?

NeRF represents a 3D scene as a continuous function that maps 3D coordinates and viewing directions to color and density.

NeRF (Neural Radiance Fields) models a scene using a neural network that takes a 3D point (x, y, z) and viewing direction (θ, φ) and outputs color (RGB) and volume density. It uses volume rendering to synthesize novel views by integrating sampled points along camera rays. Instead of explicit meshes, it learns a continuous volumetric representation, enabling highly realistic view synthesis.