In this paper, we address the shape-from-shading problem by training deep
networks with synthetic images. Unlike conventional approaches that combine
deep learning and synthetic imagery, we propose an approach that does not need
any external shape dataset to render synthetic images. Our approach consists of
two synergistic processes: the evolution of complex shapes from simple
primitives, and the training of a deep network for shape-from-shading. The
evolution generates better shapes guided by the network training, while the
training improves by using the evolved shapes. We show that our approach
achieves state-of-the-art performance on a shape-from-shading benchmark