# Neural Body Fitting: Unifying Deep Learning and Model-Based Human Pose and Shape Estimation

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/1808.05942 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/1808.05942/

## Key facts

- Cited by 185 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- First posted on arXiv 17 Aug 2018.

## Built on by (most cited first, 30 of 185)

- [Humans in 4D: Reconstructing and Tracking Humans with Transformers](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.20091/) (2023)
- [PARE: Part Attention Regressor for 3D Human Body Estimation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2104.08527/) (2021)
- [Mesh Graphormer](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2104.00272/) (2021)
- [PyMAF: 3D Human Pose and Shape Regression with Pyramidal Mesh Alignment Feedback Loop](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.16507/) (2021)
- [A-NeRF: Articulated Neural Radiance Fields for Learning Human Shape, Appearance, and Pose](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2102.06199/) (2021)
- [FrankMocap: A Monocular 3D Whole-Body Pose Estimation System via Regression and Integration](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2108.06428/) (2021)
- [Ditto: Building Digital Twins of Articulated Objects from Interaction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2202.08227/) (2022)
- [SMPLicit: Topology-aware Generative Model for Clothed People](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.06871/) (2021)
- [PyMAF-X: Towards Well-aligned Full-body Model Regression from Monocular Images](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2207.06400/) (2022)
- [Kimera: from SLAM to Spatial Perception with 3D Dynamic Scene Graphs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2101.06894/) (2021)
- [SelfRecon: Self Reconstruction Your Digital Avatar from Monocular Video](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2201.12792/) (2022)
- [EgoBody: Human Body Shape and Motion of Interacting People from Head-Mounted Devices](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2112.07642/) (2021)
- [Human POSEitioning System (HPS): 3D Human Pose Estimation and Self-localization in Large Scenes from Body-Mounted Sensors](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.17265/) (2021)
- [Collaborative Regression of Expressive Bodies using Moderation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2105.05301/) (2021)
- [HuMMan: Multi-Modal 4D Human Dataset for Versatile Sensing and Modeling](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2204.13686/) (2022)
- [SimPoE: Simulated Character Control for 3D Human Pose Estimation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2104.00683/) (2021)
- [A-SDF: Learning Disentangled Signed Distance Functions for Articulated Shape Representation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2104.07645/) (2021)
- [TRAM: Global Trajectory and Motion of 3D Humans from in-the-wild Videos](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.17346/) (2024)
- [Recovering 3D Human Mesh from Monocular Images: A Survey](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2203.01923/) (2022)
- [Learning Motion Priors for 4D Human Body Capture in 3D Scenes](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2108.10399/) (2021)
- [EMDB: The Electromagnetic Database of Global 3D Human Pose and Shape in the Wild](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2308.16894/) (2023)
- [CHORE: Contact, Human and Object REconstruction from a single RGB image](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2204.02445/) (2022)
- [TokenHMR: Advancing Human Mesh Recovery with a Tokenized Pose Representation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.16752/) (2024)
- [InterCap: Joint Markerless 3D Tracking of Humans and Objects in Interaction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2209.12354/) (2022)
- [Pose-NDF: Modeling Human Pose Manifolds with Neural Distance Fields](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2207.13807/) (2022)
- [Capturing and Animation of Body and Clothing from Monocular Video](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2210.01868/) (2022)
- [Deep Regression on Manifolds: A 3D Rotation Case Study](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.16317/) (2021)
- [Playing for 3D Human Recovery](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2110.07588/) (2021)
- [Capturing Humans in Motion: Temporal-Attentive 3D Human Pose and Shape Estimation from Monocular Video](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2203.08534/) (2022)
- [Estimating Body and Hand Motion in an Ego-sensed World](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.03665/) (2024)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Direct prediction of 3D body pose and shape remains a challenge even for highly parameterized deep learning models. Mapping from the 2D image space to the prediction space is difficult: perspective ambiguities make the loss function noisy and training data is scarce. In this paper, we propose a novel approach (Neural Body Fitting (NBF)). It integrates a statistical body model within a CNN, leveraging reliable bottom-up semantic body part segmentation and robust top-down body model constraints. NBF is fully differentiable and can be trained using 2D and 3D annotations. In detailed experiments, we analyze how the components of our model affect performance, especially the use of part segmentations as an explicit intermediate representation, and present a robust, efficiently trainable framework for 3D human pose estimation from 2D images with competitive results on standard benchmarks. Code will be made available at http://github.com/mohomran/neural_body_fitting