Systems and methods for training a neural network based three-dimensional (3D) encoder for 3D classification are provided. A training dataset including a plurality of samples is received, wherein a first sample includes an image, a text, and a point cloud. An image encoder of a pretrained vision and language model is used to generate image representations for the image of the first sample. A text encoder of the pretrained vision and language model is used to generate text representations for the text of the first sample. The neural network based 3D encoder is used to generate 3D representations for the point cloud of the first sample. A loss objective is computed based on the image representations, text representations, and 3D representations. Parameters of the neural network based 3D encoder are updated based on the computed loss objective via backpropagation.