# Neural Strands: Learning Hair Geometry and Appearance from Multi-View Images

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2207.14067 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2207.14067/

## Key facts

- Cited by 40 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 25 of its 54 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 28 Jul 2022.

## Builds on (most cited first, 25 of 25)

- [The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Deep Features as a Perceptual Metric](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1801.03924/) (2018)
- [Auto-Encoding Variational Bayes](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1312.6114/) (2013)
- [Neural Ordinary Differential Equations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1806.07366/) (2018)
- [Implicit Neural Representations with Periodic Activation Functions](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2006.09661/) (2020)
- [Nerfies: Deformable Neural Radiance Fields](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2011.12948/) (2020)
- [Alias-Free Generative Adversarial Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2106.12423/) (2021)
- [PIFu: Pixel-Aligned Implicit Function for High-Resolution Clothed Human Digitization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1905.05172/) (2019)
- [Weight Normalization: A Simple Reparameterization to Accelerate Training of Deep Neural Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1602.07868/) (2016)
- [Soft Rasterizer: A Differentiable Renderer for Image-based 3D Reasoning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1904.01786/) (2019)
- [Neural Point-Based Graphics](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1906.08240/) (2019)
- [State of the Art on Neural Rendering](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2004.03805/) (2020)
- [Mixture of Volumetric Primitives for Efficient Neural Rendering](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.01954/) (2021)
- [Differentiable Surface Splatting for Point-based Geometry Processing](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1906.04173/) (2019)
- [Deep Appearance Models for Face Rendering](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1808.00362/) (2018)
- [MoFA: Model-based Deep Convolutional Face Autoencoder for Unsupervised Monocular Reconstruction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1703.10580/) (2017)
- [Nonlinear 3D Face Morphable Model](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1804.03786/) (2018)
- [Modulated Periodic Activations for Generalizable Local Functional Representations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2104.03960/) (2021)
- [SC-FEGAN: Face Editing Generative Adversarial Network with User's Sketch and Color](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1902.06838/) (2019)
- [Driving-Signal Aware Full-Body Avatars](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2105.10441/) (2021)
- [Understanding SSIM](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2006.13846/) (2020)
- [MonoClothCap: Towards Temporally Coherent Clothing Capture from Monocular RGB Video](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2009.10711/) (2020)
- [Intuitive, Interactive Beard and Hair Synthesis with Generative Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2004.06848/) (2020)
- [Deep Perceptual Compression](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1907.08310/) (2019)
- [Neural Hair Rendering](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2004.13297/) (2020)
- [Two-phase Hair Image Synthesis by Self-Enhancing Generative Model](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1902.11203/) (2019)

## Built on by (most cited first, 30 of 40)

- [GaussianAvatars: Photorealistic Head Avatars with Rigged 3D Gaussians](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.02069/) (2023)
- [GaussianHair: Hair Modeling and Rendering with Light-aware Gaussians](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2402.10483/) (2024)
- [RenderMe-360: A Large Digital Asset Library and Benchmarks Towards High-fidelity Head Avatars](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.13353/) (2023)
- [Learning Disentangled Avatars with Hybrid 3D Representations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2309.06441/) (2023)
- [Neural Haircut: Prior-Guided Strand-Based Hair Reconstruction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2306.05872/) (2023)
- [Text-Guided Generation and Editing of Compositional 3D Avatars](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2309.07125/) (2023)
- [ExBluRF: Efficient Radiance Fields for Extreme Motion Blurred Images](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2309.08957/) (2023)
- [Human Hair Reconstruction with Strand-Aligned 3D Gaussians](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2409.14778/) (2024)
- [HHAvatar: Gaussian Head Avatar with Dynamic Hairs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.03029/) (2023)
- [NeuWigs: A Neural Dynamic Model for Volumetric Hair Capture and Animation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2212.00613/) (2022)
- [HAAR: Text-Conditioned Generative Model of 3D Strand-based Human Hairstyles](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.11666/) (2023)
- [MonoHair: High-Fidelity Hair Modeling from a Monocular Video](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.18356/) (2024)
- [Perm: A Parametric Representation for Multi-Style 3D Hair Modeling](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.19451/) (2024)
- [DINER: Depth-aware Image-based NEural Radiance fields](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2211.16630/) (2022)
- [DiffLocks: Generating 3D Hair from a Single Image using Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.06166/) (2025)
- [SurFhead: Affine Rig Blending for Geometrically Accurate 2D Gaussian Surfel Head Avatars](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.11682/) (2024)
- [Automatic Animation of Hair Blowing in Still Portrait Photos](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2309.14207/) (2023)
- [Dr.Hair: Reconstructing Scalp-Connected Hair Strands without Pre-training via Differentiable Rendering of Line Segments](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.17496/) (2024)
- [Quaffure: Real-Time Quasi-Static Neural Hair Simulation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2412.10061/) (2024)
- [Im2Haircut: Single-view Strand-based Hair Reconstruction for Human Avatars](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2509.01469/) (2025)
- [Deformable Model-Driven Neural Rendering for High-Fidelity 3D Reconstruction of Human Heads Under Low-View Settings](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.13855/) (2023)
- [PEGASUS: Personalized Generative 3D Avatars with Composable Attributes](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2402.10636/) (2024)
- [GroomLight: Hybrid Inverse Rendering for Relightable Human Hair Appearance Modeling](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.10597/) (2025)
- [HairCUP: Hair Compositional Universal Prior for 3D Gaussian Avatars](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2507.19481/) (2025)
- [StrandHead: Text to Hair-Disentangled 3D Head Avatars Using Human-Centric Priors](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2412.11586/) (2024)
- [NeuralFur: Animal Fur Reconstruction From Multi-View Images](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2601.12481/) (2026)
- [A Local Appearance Model for Volumetric Capture of Diverse Hairstyle](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.08679/) (2023)
- [Spline-based Transformers](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2504.02797/) (2025)
- [HairGS: Hair Strand Reconstruction based on 3D Gaussian Splatting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2509.07774/) (2025)
- [DGH: Dynamic Gaussian Hair](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2512.17094/) (2025)

## Abstract (arXiv)

We present Neural Strands, a novel learning framework for modeling accurate hair geometry and appearance from multi-view image inputs. The learned hair model can be rendered in real-time from any viewpoint with high-fidelity view-dependent effects. Our model achieves intuitive shape and style control unlike volumetric counterparts. To enable these properties, we propose a novel hair representation based on a neural scalp texture that encodes the geometry and appearance of individual strands at each texel location. Furthermore, we introduce a novel neural rendering framework based on rasterization of the learned hair strands. Our neural rendering is strand-accurate and anti-aliased, making the rendering view-consistent and photorealistic. Combining appearance with a multi-view geometric prior, we enable, for the first time, the joint learning of appearance and explicit hair geometry from a multi-view setup. We demonstrate the efficacy of our approach in terms of fidelity and efficiency for various hairstyles.