# Drivable Volumetric Avatars using Texel-Aligned Features

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2207.09774 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2207.09774/

## Key facts

- Cited by 62 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 34 of its 52 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 20 Jul 2022.

## Builds on (most cited first, 30 of 34)

- [PIFu: Pixel-Aligned Implicit Function for High-Resolution Clothed Human Digitization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1905.05172/) (2019)
- [Neural Body: Implicit Neural Representations with Structured Latent Codes for Novel View Synthesis of Dynamic Humans](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2012.15838/) (2020)
- [PIFuHD: Multi-Level Pixel-Aligned Implicit Function for High-Resolution 3D Human Digitization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2004.00452/) (2020)
- [Animatable Neural Radiance Fields for Modeling Dynamic Human Bodies](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2105.02872/) (2021)
- [Implicit Functions in Feature Space for 3D Shape Reconstruction and Completion](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2003.01456/) (2020)
- [Convolutional Pose Machines](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1602.00134/) (2016)
- [Mixture of Volumetric Primitives for Efficient Neural Rendering](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.01954/) (2021)
- [ARCH: Animatable Reconstruction of Clothed Humans](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2004.04572/) (2020)
- [Function4D: Real-time Human Volumetric Capture from Very Sparse Consumer RGBD Sensors](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2105.01859/) (2021)
- [Multi-Garment Net: Learning to Dress 3D People from Images](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1908.06903/) (2019)
- [Video Based Reconstruction of 3D People Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1803.04758/) (2018)
- [A-NeRF: Articulated Neural Radiance Fields for Learning Human Shape, Appearance, and Pose](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2102.06199/) (2021)
- [PaMIR: Parametric Model-Conditioned Implicit Representation for Image-based Human Reconstruction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2007.03858/) (2020)
- [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)
- [Neural Volumes: Learning Dynamic Renderable Volumes from Images](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1906.07751/) (2019)
- [Tex2Shape: Detailed Full Human Body Geometry From a Single Image](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1904.08645/) (2019)
- [Deep Appearance Models for Face Rendering](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1808.00362/) (2018)
- [Combining Implicit Function Learning and Parametric Models for 3D Human Reconstruction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2007.11432/) (2020)
- [Real-time Deep Dynamic Characters](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2105.01794/) (2021)
- [Neural-GIF: Neural Generalized Implicit Functions for Animating People in Clothing](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2108.08807/) (2021)
- [LiveCap: Real-time Human Performance Capture from Monocular Video](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1810.02648/) (2018)
- [NPMs: Neural Parametric Models for 3D Deformable Shapes](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2104.00702/) (2021)
- [The Power of Points for Modeling Humans in Clothing](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2109.01137/) (2021)
- [Driving-Signal Aware Full-Body Avatars](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2105.10441/) (2021)
- [360-Degree Textures of People in Clothing from a Single Image](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1908.07117/) (2019)
- [Monocular Real-Time Volumetric Performance Capture](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2007.13988/) (2020)
- [SCALE: Modeling Clothed Humans with a Surface Codec of Articulated Local Elements](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2104.07660/) (2021)
- [SMPLpix: Neural Avatars from 3D Human Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2008.06872/) (2020)
- [Modeling Clothing as a Separate Layer for an Animatable Human Avatar](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2106.14879/) (2021)

## Built on by (most cited first, 30 of 62)

- [GaussianAvatar: Towards Realistic Human Avatar Modeling from a Single Video via Animatable 3D Gaussians](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.02134/) (2023)
- [GauHuman: Articulated Gaussian Splatting from Monocular Human Videos](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.02973/) (2023)
- [Drivable 3D Gaussian Avatars](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.08581/) (2023)
- [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)
- [Expressive Whole-Body 3D Gaussian Avatar](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.21686/) (2024)
- [AvatarReX: Real-time Expressive Full-body Avatars](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.04789/) (2023)
- [DiffusionRig: Learning Personalized Priors for Facial Appearance Editing](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2304.06711/) (2023)
- [Learning Neural Volumetric Representations of Dynamic Humans in Minutes](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2302.12237/) (2023)
- [GAvatar: Animatable 3D Gaussian Avatars with Implicit Mesh Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.11461/) (2023)
- [Learning Locally Editable Virtual Humans](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.00121/) (2023)
- [GoMAvatar: Efficient Animatable Human Modeling from Monocular Video Using Gaussians-on-Mesh](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.07991/) (2024)
- [PoseVocab: Learning Joint-structured Pose Embeddings for Human Avatar Modeling](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2304.13006/) (2023)
- [Towards Practical Capture of High-Fidelity Relightable Avatars](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2309.04247/) (2023)
- [PrimDiffusion: Volumetric Primitives Diffusion for 3D Human Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.04559/) (2023)
- [MeshAvatar: Learning High-quality Triangular Human Avatars from Multi-view Videos](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.08414/) (2024)
- [Vid2Avatar-Pro: Authentic Avatar from Videos in the Wild via Universal Prior](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.01610/) (2025)
- [NeuWigs: A Neural Dynamic Model for Volumetric Hair Capture and Animation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2212.00613/) (2022)
- [DINAR: Diffusion Inpainting of Neural Textures for One-Shot Human Avatars](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.09375/) (2023)
- [TriHuman : A Real-time and Controllable Tri-plane Representation for Detailed Human Geometry and Appearance Synthesis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.05161/) (2023)
- [NPC: Neural Point Characters from Video](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2304.02013/) (2023)
- [Drivable Avatar Clothing: Faithful Full-Body Telepresence with Dynamic Clothing Driven by Sparse RGB-D Input](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2310.05917/) (2023)
- [GVA: Reconstructing Vivid 3D Gaussian Avatars from Monocular Videos](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2402.16607/) (2024)
- [Relightable Full-Body Gaussian Codec Avatars](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2501.14726/) (2025)
- [RelightableHands: Efficient Neural Relighting of Articulated Hand Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2302.04866/) (2023)
- [Expressive Gaussian Human Avatars from Monocular RGB Video](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.03204/) (2024)
- [Gaussian Eigen Models for Human Heads](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.04545/) (2024)
- [IntrinsicAvatar: Physically Based Inverse Rendering of Dynamic Humans from Monocular Videos via Explicit Ray Tracing](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.05210/) (2023)
- [Structured 3D Features for Reconstructing Controllable Avatars](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2212.06820/) (2022)
- [XAGen: 3D Expressive Human Avatars Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.13574/) (2023)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Photorealistic telepresence requires both high-fidelity body modeling and faithful driving to enable dynamically synthesized appearance that is indistinguishable from reality. In this work, we propose an end-to-end framework that addresses two core challenges in modeling and driving full-body avatars of real people. One challenge is driving an avatar while staying faithful to details and dynamics that cannot be captured by a global low-dimensional parameterization such as body pose. Our approach supports driving of clothed avatars with wrinkles and motion that a real driving performer exhibits beyond the training corpus. Unlike existing global state representations or non-parametric screen-space approaches, we introduce texel-aligned features -- a localised representation which can leverage both the structural prior of a skeleton-based parametric model and observed sparse image signals at the same time. Another challenge is modeling a temporally coherent clothed avatar, which typically requires precise surface tracking. To circumvent this, we propose a novel volumetric avatar representation by extending mixtures of volumetric primitives to articulated objects. By explicitly incorporating articulation, our approach naturally generalizes to unseen poses. We also introduce a localized viewpoint conditioning, which leads to a large improvement in generalization of view-dependent appearance. The proposed volumetric representation does not require high-quality mesh tracking as a prerequisite and brings significant quality improvements compared to mesh-based counterparts. In our experiments, we carefully examine our design choices and demonstrate the efficacy of our approach, outperforming the state-of-the-art methods on challenging driving scenarios.