# Moulding Humans: Non-parametric 3D Human Shape Estimation from Single Images

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/1908.00439 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/1908.00439/

## Key facts

- Cited by 67 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- First posted on arXiv 1 Aug 2019.

## Built on by (most cited first, 30 of 67)

- [Function4D: Real-time Human Volumetric Capture from Very Sparse Consumer RGBD Sensors](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2105.01859/) (2021)
- [BEDLAM: A Synthetic Dataset of Bodies Exhibiting Detailed Lifelike Animated Motion](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2306.16940/) (2023)
- [ECON: Explicit Clothed humans Optimized via Normal integration](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2212.07422/) (2022)
- [SCANimate: Weakly Supervised Learning of Skinned Clothed Avatar Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2104.03313/) (2021)
- [ARCH++: Animation-Ready Clothed Human Reconstruction Revisited](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2108.07845/) (2021)
- [SMPLicit: Topology-aware Generative Model for Clothed People](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.06871/) (2021)
- [Collaborative Regression of Expressive Bodies using Moderation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2105.05301/) (2021)
- [Photorealistic Monocular 3D Reconstruction of Humans Wearing Clothing](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2204.08906/) (2022)
- [Structured Local Radiance Fields for Human Avatar Modeling](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2203.14478/) (2022)
- [TeCH: Text-guided Reconstruction of Lifelike Clothed Humans](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2308.08545/) (2023)
- [Style-Based Global Appearance Flow for Virtual Try-On](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2204.01046/) (2022)
- [Self-Supervised Collision Handling via Generative 3D Garment Models for Virtual Try-On](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2105.06462/) (2021)
- [SIFU: Side-view Conditioned Implicit Function for Real-world Usable Clothed Human Reconstruction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.06704/) (2023)
- [High-fidelity 3D Human Digitization from Single 2K Resolution Images](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.15108/) (2023)
- [DeepMultiCap: Performance Capture of Multiple Characters Using Sparse Multiview Cameras](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2105.00261/) (2021)
- [Human-Aware Object Placement for Visual Environment Reconstruction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2203.03609/) (2022)
- [Body Meshes as Points](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2105.02467/) (2021)
- [DiffuStereo: High Quality Human Reconstruction via Diffusion-based Stereo Using Sparse Cameras](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2207.08000/) (2022)
- [Global-correlated 3D-decoupling Transformer for Clothed Avatar Reconstruction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2309.13524/) (2023)
- [Single-Image 3D Human Digitization with Shape-Guided Diffusion](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.09221/) (2023)
- [StereoPIFu: Depth Aware Clothed Human Digitization via Stereo Vision](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2104.05289/) (2021)
- [Point-Based Modeling of Human Clothing](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2104.08230/) (2021)
- [M3D-VTON: A Monocular-to-3D Virtual Try-On Network](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2108.05126/) (2021)
- [State of the Art in Dense Monocular Non-Rigid 3D Reconstruction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2210.15664/) (2022)
- [Human Performance Capture from Monocular Video in the Wild](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2111.14672/) (2021)
- [AvatarCap: Animatable Avatar Conditioned Monocular Human Volumetric Capture](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2207.02031/) (2022)
- [BEDLAM2.0: Synthetic Humans and Cameras in Motion](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2511.14394/) (2025)
- [Garment4D: Garment Reconstruction from Point Cloud Sequences](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2112.04159/) (2021)
- [PSHuman: Photorealistic Single-image 3D Human Reconstruction using Cross-Scale Multiview Diffusion and Explicit Remeshing](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2409.10141/) (2024)
- [POSEFusion: Pose-guided Selective Fusion for Single-view Human Volumetric Capture](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.15331/) (2021)

## Abstract (arXiv)

In this paper, we tackle the problem of 3D human shape estimation from single RGB images. While the recent progress in convolutional neural networks has allowed impressive results for 3D human pose estimation, estimating the full 3D shape of a person is still an open issue. Model-based approaches can output precise meshes of naked under-cloth human bodies but fail to estimate details and un-modelled elements such as hair or clothing. On the other hand, non-parametric volumetric approaches can potentially estimate complete shapes but, in practice, they are limited by the resolution of the output grid and cannot produce detailed estimates. In this work, we propose a non-parametric approach that employs a double depth map to represent the 3D shape of a person: a visible depth map and a "hidden" depth map are estimated and combined, to reconstruct the human 3D shape as done with a "mould". This representation through 2D depth maps allows a higher resolution output with a much lower dimension than voxel-based volumetric representations. Additionally, our fully derivable depth-based model allows us to efficiently incorporate a discriminator in an adversarial fashion to improve the accuracy and "humanness" of the 3D output. We train and quantitatively validate our approach on SURREAL and on 3D-HUMANS, a new photorealistic dataset made of semi-synthetic in-house videos annotated with 3D ground truth surfaces.