ViewCrafter is an innovative approach that leverages the generative capabilities of video diffusion models and the coarse 3D cues provided by point-based representations to synthesize high-fidelity new viewpoints of general scenes from single or sparse images. The method progressively expands the area covered by 3D cues and new viewpoints through iterative view synthesis strategies and camera trajectory planning algorithms, thereby increasing the generation range of new viewpoints. ViewCrafter can facilitate various applications, such as creating immersive experiences and real-time rendering by optimizing 3D-GS representations, as well as promoting imaginative content creation through scene-level text-to-3D generation.