# Locally Aware Piecewise Transformation Fields for 3D Human Mesh Registration

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2104.08160 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2104.08160/

## Key facts

- Cited by 41 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 42 of its 63 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 16 Apr 2021.

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

- [PyTorch: An Imperative Style, High-Performance Deep Learning Library](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1912.01703/) (2019)
- [PointNet: Deep Learning on Point Sets for 3D Classification and Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1612.00593/) (2016)
- [Neural Ordinary Differential Equations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1806.07366/) (2018)
- [DeepSDF: Learning Continuous Signed Distance Functions for Shape Representation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1901.05103/) (2019)
- [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)
- [On the Continuity of Rotation Representations in Neural Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1812.07035/) (2018)
- [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)
- [Convolutional Occupancy Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2003.04618/) (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)
- [Convolutional Mesh Regression for Single-Image Human Shape Reconstruction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1905.03244/) (2019)
- [ARCH: Animatable Reconstruction of Clothed Humans](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2004.04572/) (2020)
- [Total Capture: A 3D Deformation Model for Tracking Faces, Hands, and Bodies](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1801.01615/) (2018)
- [Unite the People: Closing the Loop Between 3D and 2D Human Representations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1701.02468/) (2017)
- [Neural Body Fitting: Unifying Deep Learning and Model-Based Human Pose and Shape Estimation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1808.05942/) (2018)
- [SCANimate: Weakly Supervised Learning of Skinned Clothed Avatar Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2104.03313/) (2021)
- [Learning to Reconstruct People in Clothing from a Single RGB Camera](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1903.05885/) (2019)
- [Tex2Shape: Detailed Full Human Body Geometry From a Single Image](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1904.08645/) (2019)
- [Monocular Total Capture: Posing Face, Body, and Hands in the Wild](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1812.01598/) (2018)
- [3D-CODED : 3D Correspondences by Deep Deformation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1806.05228/) (2018)
- [NASA: Neural Articulated Shape Approximation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1912.03207/) (2019)
- [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)
- [LoopReg: Self-supervised Learning of Implicit Surface Correspondences, Pose and Shape for 3D Human Mesh Registration](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2010.12447/) (2020)

## Built on by (most cited first, 30 of 41)

- [Neural Fields in Visual Computing and Beyond](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2111.11426/) (2021)
- [ARAH: Animatable Volume Rendering of Articulated Human SDFs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2210.10036/) (2022)
- [InstantAvatar: Learning Avatars from Monocular Video in 60 Seconds](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2212.10550/) (2022)
- [HuMMan: Multi-Modal 4D Human Dataset for Versatile Sensing and Modeling](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2204.13686/) (2022)
- [The Power of Points for Modeling Humans in Clothing](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2109.01137/) (2021)
- [GTA: A Geometry-Aware Attention Mechanism for Multi-View Transformers](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2310.10375/) (2023)
- [MetaAvatar: Learning Animatable Clothed Human Models from Few Depth Images](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2106.11944/) (2021)
- [HiFi4G: High-Fidelity Human Performance Rendering via Compact Gaussian Splatting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.03461/) (2023)
- [LISA: Learning Implicit Shape and Appearance of Hands](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2204.01695/) (2022)
- [A Survey of Non-Rigid 3D Registration](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2203.07858/) (2022)
- [COAP: Compositional Articulated Occupancy of People](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2204.06184/) (2022)
- [A Skeleton-Driven Neural Occupancy Representation for Articulated Hands](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2109.11399/) (2021)
- [Diversity-Measurable Anomaly Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.05047/) (2023)
- [Hand Avatar: Free-Pose Hand Animation and Rendering from Monocular Video](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2211.12782/) (2022)
- [Multiway Non-rigid Point Cloud Registration via Learned Functional Map Synchronization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2111.12878/) (2021)
- [Robust Dual Gaussian Splatting for Immersive Human-centric Volumetric Videos](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2409.08353/) (2024)
- [Neural Point-based Shape Modeling of Humans in Challenging Clothing](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2209.06814/) (2022)
- [Neural Shape Deformation Priors](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2210.05616/) (2022)
- [FLAG3D: A 3D Fitness Activity Dataset with Language Instruction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2212.04638/) (2022)
- [NICP: Neural ICP for 3D Human Registration at Scale](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.14024/) (2023)
- [H4D: Human 4D Modeling by Learning Neural Compositional Representation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2203.01247/) (2022)
- [Generalizing Neural Human Fitting to Unseen Poses With Articulated SE(3) Equivariance](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2304.10528/) (2023)
- [MoCaNet: Motion Retargeting in-the-wild via Canonicalization Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2112.10082/) (2021)
- [PointHPS: Cascaded 3D Human Pose and Shape Estimation from Point Clouds](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2308.14492/) (2023)
- [ETCH: Generalizing Body Fitting to Clothed Humans via Equivariant Tightness](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.10624/) (2025)
- [Self-supervised 3D Human Mesh Recovery from Noisy Point Clouds](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2107.07539/) (2021)
- [LoRD: Local 4D Implicit Representation for High-Fidelity Dynamic Human Modeling](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2208.08622/) (2022)
- [Human as Points: Explicit Point-based 3D Human Reconstruction from Single-view RGB Images](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.02892/) (2023)
- [Towards Robust 3D Pose Transfer with Adversarial Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.02242/) (2024)
- [EvolvingGS: High-Fidelity Streamable Volumetric Video via Evolving 3D Gaussian Representation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.05162/) (2025)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Registering point clouds of dressed humans to parametric human models is a challenging task in computer vision. Traditional approaches often rely on heavily engineered pipelines that require accurate manual initialization of human poses and tedious post-processing. More recently, learning-based methods are proposed in hope to automate this process. We observe that pose initialization is key to accurate registration but existing methods often fail to provide accurate pose initialization. One major obstacle is that, regressing joint rotations from point clouds or images of humans is still very challenging. To this end, we propose novel piecewise transformation fields (PTF), a set of functions that learn 3D translation vectors to map any query point in posed space to its correspond position in rest-pose space. We combine PTF with multi-class occupancy networks, obtaining a novel learning-based framework that learns to simultaneously predict shape and per-point correspondences between the posed space and the canonical space for clothed human. Our key insight is that the translation vector for each query point can be effectively estimated using the point-aligned local features; consequently, rigid per bone transformations and joint rotations can be obtained efficiently via a least-square fitting given the estimated point correspondences, circumventing the challenging task of directly regressing joint rotations from neural networks. Furthermore, the proposed PTF facilitate canonicalized occupancy estimation, which greatly improves generalization capability and results in more accurate surface reconstruction with only half of the parameters compared with the state-of-the-art. Both qualitative and quantitative studies show that fitting parametric models with poses initialized by our network results in much better registration quality, especially for extreme poses.