A natural language scene description is converted into a scene that is rendered in three dimensions by an augmented reality (AR) display device. Text-to-AR scene conversion allows a user to create an AR scene visualization through natural language text inputs that are easily created and well-understood by the user. The user can, for instance, select a pre-defined natural language description of a scene or manually enter a custom natural language description. The user can also select a physical real-world surface on which the AR scene is to be rendered. The AR scene is then rendered using the augmented reality display device according to its natural language description using 3D models of objects and humanoid characters with associated animations of those characters, as well as from extensive language-to-visual datasets. Using the display device, the user can move around the real-world environment and experience the AR scene from different angles.