# The Power of Points for Modeling Humans in Clothing

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2109.01137 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2109.01137/

## Key facts

- Cited by 90 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 60 of its 83 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 2 Sep 2021.

## Builds on (most cited first, 30 of 60)

- [Adam: A Method for Stochastic Optimization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1412.6980/) (2014)
- [U-Net: Convolutional Networks for Biomedical Image Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1505.04597/) (2015)
- [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)
- [Learning Implicit Fields for Generative Shape Modeling](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1812.02822/) (2018)
- [A Point Set Generation Network for 3D Object Reconstruction from a Single Image](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1612.00603/) (2016)
- [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)
- [Open3D: A Modern Library for 3D Data Processing](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1801.09847/) (2018)
- [Neural Body: Implicit Neural Representations with Structured Latent Codes for Novel View Synthesis of Dynamic Humans](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2012.15838/) (2020)
- [AtlasNet: A Papier-Mach'e Approach to Learning 3D Surface Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1802.05384/) (2018)
- [PIFuHD: Multi-Level Pixel-Aligned Implicit Function for High-Resolution 3D Human Digitization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2004.00452/) (2020)
- [Local Implicit Grid Representations for 3D Scenes](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2003.08981/) (2020)
- [Neural Point-Based Graphics](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1906.08240/) (2019)
- [Deep Local Shapes: Learning Local SDF Priors for Detailed 3D Reconstruction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2003.10983/) (2020)
- [Neural Unsigned Distance Fields for Implicit Function Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2010.13938/) (2020)
- [ARCH: Animatable Reconstruction of Clothed Humans](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2004.04572/) (2020)
- [Deferred Neural Rendering: Image Synthesis using Neural Textures](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1904.12356/) (2019)
- [Multi-Garment Net: Learning to Dress 3D People from Images](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1908.06903/) (2019)
- [PaMIR: Parametric Model-Conditioned Implicit Representation for Image-based Human Reconstruction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2007.03858/) (2020)
- [SNARF: Differentiable Forward Skinning for Animating Non-Rigid Neural Implicit Shapes](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2104.03953/) (2021)
- [AGORA: Avatars in Geography Optimized for Regression Analysis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2104.14643/) (2021)
- [Joint 3D Face Reconstruction and Dense Alignment with Position Map Regression Network](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1803.07835/) (2018)
- [Shape As Points: A Differentiable Poisson Solver](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2106.03452/) (2021)
- [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)
- [3D-CODED : 3D Correspondences by Deep Deformation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1806.05228/) (2018)
- [SMPLicit: Topology-aware Generative Model for Clothed People](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.06871/) (2021)
- [TailorNet: Predicting Clothing in 3D as a Function of Human Pose, Shape and Garment Style](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2003.04583/) (2020)

## Built on by (most cited first, 30 of 90)

- [ICON: Implicit Clothed humans Obtained from Normals](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2112.09127/) (2021)
- [GaussianAvatar: Towards Realistic Human Avatar Modeling from a Single Video via Animatable 3D Gaussians](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.02134/) (2023)
- [PointAvatar: Deformable Point-based Head Avatars from Videos](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2212.08377/) (2022)
- [GPS-Gaussian: Generalizable Pixel-wise 3D Gaussian Splatting for Real-time Human Novel View Synthesis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.02155/) (2023)
- [ARAH: Animatable Volume Rendering of Articulated Human SDFs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2210.10036/) (2022)
- [Drivable 3D Gaussian Avatars](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.08581/) (2023)
- [Structured Local Radiance Fields for Human Avatar Modeling](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2203.14478/) (2022)
- [ASH: Animatable Gaussian Splats for Efficient and Photoreal Human Rendering](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.05941/) (2023)
- [Recovering 3D Human Mesh from Monocular Images: A Survey](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2203.01923/) (2022)
- [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)
- [HOOD: Hierarchical Graphs for Generalized Modelling of Clothing Dynamics](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2212.07242/) (2022)
- [gDNA: Towards Generative Detailed Neural Avatars](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2201.04123/) (2022)
- [Drivable Volumetric Avatars using Texel-Aligned Features](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2207.09774/) (2022)
- [Learning Locally Editable Virtual Humans](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.00121/) (2023)
- [4D-DRESS: A 4D Dataset of Real-world Human Clothing with Semantic Annotations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.18630/) (2024)
- [PhysAvatar: Learning the Physics of Dressed 3D Avatars from Visual Observations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.04421/) (2024)
- [Learning Implicit Templates for Point-Based Clothed Human Modeling](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2207.06955/) (2022)
- [PoseVocab: Learning Joint-structured Pose Embeddings for Human Avatar Modeling](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2304.13006/) (2023)
- [Pyramid Diffusion for Fine 3D Large Scene Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.12085/) (2023)
- [DiffAvatar: Simulation-Ready Garment Optimization with Differentiable Simulation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.12194/) (2023)
- [Registering Explicit to Implicit: Towards High-Fidelity Garment mesh Reconstruction from Single Images](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2203.15007/) (2022)
- [Predicting Loose-Fitting Garment Deformations Using Bone-Driven Motion Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2205.01355/) (2022)
- [Learned Vertex Descent: A New Direction for 3D Human Model Fitting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2205.06254/) (2022)
- [Dynamic Point Fields](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2304.02626/) (2023)
- [MeshAvatar: Learning High-quality Triangular Human Avatars from Multi-view Videos](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.08414/) (2024)
- [HVTR: Hybrid Volumetric-Textural Rendering for Human Avatars](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2112.10203/) (2021)
- [SPAMs: Structured Implicit Parametric Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2201.08141/) (2022)
- [Neural Point-based Shape Modeling of Humans in Challenging Clothing](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2209.06814/) (2022)
- [ResFields: Residual Neural Fields for Spatiotemporal Signals](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2309.03160/) (2023)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Currently it requires an artist to create 3D human avatars with realistic clothing that can move naturally. Despite progress on 3D scanning and modeling of human bodies, there is still no technology that can easily turn a static scan into an animatable avatar. Automating the creation of such avatars would enable many applications in games, social networking, animation, and AR/VR to name a few. The key problem is one of representation. Standard 3D meshes are widely used in modeling the minimally-clothed body but do not readily capture the complex topology of clothing. Recent interest has shifted to implicit surface models for this task but they are computationally heavy and lack compatibility with existing 3D tools. What is needed is a 3D representation that can capture varied topology at high resolution and that can be learned from data. We argue that this representation has been with us all along -- the point cloud. Point clouds have properties of both implicit and explicit representations that we exploit to model 3D garment geometry on a human body. We train a neural network with a novel local clothing geometric feature to represent the shape of different outfits. The network is trained from 3D point clouds of many types of clothing, on many bodies, in many poses, and learns to model pose-dependent clothing deformations. The geometry feature can be optimized to fit a previously unseen scan of a person in clothing, enabling the scan to be reposed realistically. Our model demonstrates superior quantitative and qualitative results in both multi-outfit modeling and unseen outfit animation. The code is available for research purposes.