# SCANimate: Weakly Supervised Learning of Skinned Clothed Avatar Networks

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2104.03313 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2104.03313/

## Key facts

- Cited by 181 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 42 of its 77 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 7 Apr 2021.

## Builds on (most cited first, 30 of 42)

- [DeepSDF: Learning Continuous Signed Distance Functions for Shape Representation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1901.05103/) (2019)
- [Implicit Neural Representations with Periodic Activation Functions](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2006.09661/) (2020)
- [Occupancy Networks: Learning 3D Reconstruction in Function Space](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1812.03828/) (2018)
- [Expressive Body Capture: 3D Hands, Face, and Body from a Single Image](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1904.05866/) (2019)
- [Learning Implicit Fields for Generative Shape Modeling](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1812.02822/) (2018)
- [End-to-end Recovery of Human Shape and Pose](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1712.06584/) (2017)
- [PIFu: Pixel-Aligned Implicit Function for High-Resolution Clothed Human Digitization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1905.05172/) (2019)
- [Implicit Geometric Regularization for Learning Shapes](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2002.10099/) (2020)
- [Keep it SMPL: Automatic Estimation of 3D Human Pose and Shape from a Single Image](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1607.08128/) (2016)
- [Learning to Reconstruct 3D Human Pose and Shape via Model-fitting in the Loop](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1909.12828/) (2019)
- [VIBE: Video Inference for Human Body Pose and Shape Estimation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1912.05656/) (2019)
- [PIFuHD: Multi-Level Pixel-Aligned Implicit Function for High-Resolution 3D Human Digitization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2004.00452/) (2020)
- [Implicit Functions in Feature Space for 3D Shape Reconstruction and Completion](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2003.01456/) (2020)
- [Learning 3D Human Dynamics from Video](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1812.01601/) (2018)
- [Generating 3D faces using Convolutional Mesh Autoencoders](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1807.10267/) (2018)
- [ARCH: Animatable Reconstruction of Clothed Humans](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2004.04572/) (2020)
- [Multi-Garment Net: Learning to Dress 3D People from Images](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1908.06903/) (2019)
- [Learning Shape Templates with Structured Implicit Functions](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1904.06447/) (2019)
- [Video Based Reconstruction of 3D People Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1803.04758/) (2018)
- [Texture Fields: Learning Texture Representations in Function Space](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1905.07259/) (2019)
- [Unite the People: Closing the Loop Between 3D and 2D Human Representations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1701.02468/) (2017)
- [STAR: Sparse Trained Articulated Human Body Regressor](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2008.08535/) (2020)
- [DeepHuman: 3D Human Reconstruction from a Single Image](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1903.06473/) (2019)
- [Learning to Reconstruct People in Clothing from a Single RGB Camera](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1903.05885/) (2019)
- [SMPLicit: Topology-aware Generative Model for Clothed People](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.06871/) (2021)
- [NASA: Neural Articulated Shape Approximation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1912.03207/) (2019)
- [TailorNet: Predicting Clothing in 3D as a Function of Human Pose, Shape and Garment Style](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2003.04583/) (2020)
- [BodyNet: Volumetric Inference of 3D Human Body Shapes](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1804.04875/) (2018)
- [Combining Implicit Function Learning and Parametric Models for 3D Human Reconstruction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2007.11432/) (2020)
- [BCNet: Learning Body and Cloth Shape from A Single Image](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2004.00214/) (2020)

## Built on by (most cited first, 30 of 181)

- [Neural Fields in Visual Computing and Beyond](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2111.11426/) (2021)
- [HumanNeRF: Free-viewpoint Rendering of Moving People from Monocular Video](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2201.04127/) (2022)
- [ICON: Implicit Clothed humans Obtained from Normals](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2112.09127/) (2021)
- [I M Avatar: Implicit Morphable Head Avatars from Videos](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2112.07471/) (2021)
- [SNARF: Differentiable Forward Skinning for Animating Non-Rigid Neural Implicit Shapes](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2104.03953/) (2021)
- [BANMo: Building Animatable 3D Neural Models from Many Casual Videos](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2112.12761/) (2021)
- [3DGS-Avatar: Animatable Avatars via Deformable 3D Gaussian Splatting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.09228/) (2023)
- [TAVA: Template-free Animatable Volumetric Actors](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2206.08929/) (2022)
- [GauHuman: Articulated Gaussian Splatting from Monocular Human Videos](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.02973/) (2023)
- [SelfRecon: Self Reconstruction Your Digital Avatar from Monocular Video](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2201.12792/) (2022)
- [ARAH: Animatable Volume Rendering of Articulated Human SDFs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2210.10036/) (2022)
- [Structured Local Radiance Fields for Human Avatar Modeling](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2203.14478/) (2022)
- [Animatable Neural Radiance Fields from Monocular RGB Videos](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2106.13629/) (2021)
- [LEAP: Learning Articulated Occupancy of People](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2104.06849/) (2021)
- [Human Gaussian Splatting: Real-time Rendering of Animatable Avatars](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.17113/) (2023)
- [ASH: Animatable Gaussian Splats for Efficient and Photoreal Human Rendering](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.05941/) (2023)
- [imGHUM: Implicit Generative Models of 3D Human Shape and Articulated Pose](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2108.10842/) (2021)
- [DNA-Rendering: A Diverse Neural Actor Repository for High-Fidelity Human-centric Rendering](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2307.10173/) (2023)
- [Neural-GIF: Neural Generalized Implicit Functions for Animating People in Clothing](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2108.08807/) (2021)
- [The Power of Points for Modeling Humans in Clothing](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2109.01137/) (2021)
- [Hi4D: 4D Instance Segmentation of Close Human Interaction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.15380/) (2023)
- [Pose-NDF: Modeling Human Pose Manifolds with Neural Distance Fields](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2207.13807/) (2022)
- [MonoHuman: Animatable Human Neural Field from Monocular Video](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2304.02001/) (2023)
- [AvatarReX: Real-time Expressive Full-body Avatars](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.04789/) (2023)
- [SNUG: Self-Supervised Neural Dynamic Garments](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2204.02219/) (2022)
- [Driving-Signal Aware Full-Body Avatars](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2105.10441/) (2021)
- [MetaAvatar: Learning Animatable Clothed Human Models from Few Depth Images](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2106.11944/) (2021)
- [Conditional-Flow NeRF: Accurate 3D Modelling with Reliable Uncertainty Quantification](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2203.10192/) (2022)
- [SCALE: Modeling Clothed Humans with a Surface Codec of Articulated Local Elements](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2104.07660/) (2021)
- [gDNA: Towards Generative Detailed Neural Avatars](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2201.04123/) (2022)

## Abstract (arXiv)

We present SCANimate, an end-to-end trainable framework that takes raw 3D scans of a clothed human and turns them into an animatable avatar. These avatars are driven by pose parameters and have realistic clothing that moves and deforms naturally. SCANimate does not rely on a customized mesh template or surface mesh registration. We observe that fitting a parametric 3D body model, like SMPL, to a clothed human scan is tractable while surface registration of the body topology to the scan is often not, because clothing can deviate significantly from the body shape. We also observe that articulated transformations are invertible, resulting in geometric cycle consistency in the posed and unposed shapes. These observations lead us to a weakly supervised learning method that aligns scans into a canonical pose by disentangling articulated deformations without template-based surface registration. Furthermore, to complete missing regions in the aligned scans while modeling pose-dependent deformations, we introduce a locally pose-aware implicit function that learns to complete and model geometry with learned pose correctives. In contrast to commonly used global pose embeddings, our local pose conditioning significantly reduces long-range spurious correlations and improves generalization to unseen poses, especially when training data is limited. Our method can be applied to pose-aware appearance modeling to generate a fully textured avatar. We demonstrate our approach on various clothing types with different amounts of training data, outperforming existing solutions and other variants in terms of fidelity and generality in every setting. The code is available at https://scanimate.is.tue.mpg.de.