Thinking Like Van Gogh: Structure-Aware Style Transfer via Flow-Guided 3D Gaussian Splatting

Abstract: In 1888, Vincent van Gogh wrote, "I am seeking exaggeration in the essential." This principle, amplifying structural form while suppressing photographic detail, lies at the core of Post-Impressionist art. However, most existing 3D style transfer methods invert this philosophy, treating geometry as a rigid substrate for surface-level texture projection. To authentically reproduce Post-Impressionist stylization, geometric abstraction must be embraced as the primary vehicle of expression. We propose a flow-guided geometric advection framework for 3D Gaussian Splatting (3DGS) that operationalizes this principle in a mesh-free setting. Our method extracts directional flow fields from 2D paintings and back-propagates them into 3D space, rectifying Gaussian primitives to form flow-aligned brushstrokes that conform to scene topology without relying on explicit mesh priors. This enables expressive structural deformation driven directly by painterly motion rather than photometric constraints. Our contributions are threefold: (1) a projection-based, mesh-free flow guidance mechanism that transfers 2D artistic motion into 3D Gaussian geometry; (2) a luminance-structure decoupling strategy that isolates geometric deformation from color optimization, mitigating artifacts during aggressive structural abstraction; and (3) a VLM-as-a-Judge evaluation framework that assesses artistic authenticity through aesthetic judgment instead of conventional pixel-level metrics, explicitly addressing the subjective nature of artistic stylization.