# X-Avatar: Expressive Human Avatars

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2303.04805 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.04805/

## Key facts

- Cited by 66 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 60 of its 82 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 8 Mar 2023.

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

- [Adam: A Method for Stochastic Optimization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1412.6980/) (2014)
- [PyTorch: An Imperative Style, High-Performance Deep Learning Library](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1912.01703/) (2019)
- [Improved Techniques for Training GANs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1606.03498/) (2016)
- [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)
- [AMASS: Archive of Motion Capture as Surface Shapes](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1904.03278/) (2019)
- [OpenPose: Realtime Multi-Person 2D Pose Estimation using Part Affinity Fields](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1812.08008/) (2018)
- [End-to-end Recovery of Human Shape and Pose](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1712.06584/) (2017)
- [Implicit Geometric Regularization for Learning Shapes](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2002.10099/) (2020)
- [Learning to Reconstruct 3D Human Pose and Shape via Model-fitting in the Loop](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1909.12828/) (2019)
- [Dynamic Neural Radiance Fields for Monocular 4D Facial Avatar Reconstruction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2012.03065/) (2020)
- [GRAB: A Dataset of Whole-Body Human Grasping of Objects](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2008.11200/) (2020)
- [SAL: Sign Agnostic Learning of Shapes from Raw Data](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1911.10414/) (2019)
- [Learning joint reconstruction of hands and manipulated objects](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1904.05767/) (2019)
- [PARE: Part Attention Regressor for 3D Human Body Estimation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2104.08527/) (2021)
- [HybrIK: A Hybrid Analytical-Neural Inverse Kinematics Solution for 3D Human Pose and Shape Estimation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2011.14672/) (2020)
- [ICON: Implicit Clothed humans Obtained from Normals](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2112.09127/) (2021)
- [PyMAF: 3D Human Pose and Shape Regression with Pyramidal Mesh Alignment Feedback Loop](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.16507/) (2021)
- [Multi-Garment Net: Learning to Dress 3D People from Images](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1908.06903/) (2019)
- [Total Capture: A 3D Deformation Model for Tracking Faces, Hands, and Bodies](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1801.01615/) (2018)
- [Video Based Reconstruction of 3D People Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1803.04758/) (2018)
- [Hand Keypoint Detection in Single Images using Multiview Bootstrapping](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1704.07809/) (2017)
- [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)
- [Monocular, One-stage, Regression of Multiple 3D People](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2008.12272/) (2020)
- [AGORA: Avatars in Geography Optimized for Regression Analysis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2104.14643/) (2021)
- [STAR: Sparse Trained Articulated Human Body Regressor](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2008.08535/) (2020)
- [3D Hand Shape and Pose from Images in the Wild](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1902.03451/) (2019)
- [SCANimate: Weakly Supervised Learning of Skinned Clothed Avatar Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2104.03313/) (2021)

## Built on by (most cited first, 30 of 66)

- [Expressive Whole-Body 3D Gaussian Avatar](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.21686/) (2024)
- [Hi4D: 4D Instance Segmentation of Close Human Interaction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.15380/) (2023)
- [HiFi4G: High-Fidelity Human Performance Rendering via Compact Gaussian Splatting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.03461/) (2023)
- [IDOL: Instant Photorealistic 3D Human Creation from a Single Image](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2412.14963/) (2024)
- [Learning Locally Editable Virtual Humans](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.00121/) (2023)
- [MVHumanNet: A Large-scale Dataset of Multi-view Daily Dressing Human Captures](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.02963/) (2023)
- [VLOGGER: Multimodal Diffusion for Embodied Avatar Synthesis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.08764/) (2024)
- [MeshAvatar: Learning High-quality Triangular Human Avatars from Multi-view Videos](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.08414/) (2024)
- [HAHA: Highly Articulated Gaussian Human Avatars with Textured Mesh Prior](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.01053/) (2024)
- [Robust Dual Gaussian Splatting for Immersive Human-centric Volumetric Videos](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2409.08353/) (2024)
- [Animatable and Relightable Gaussians for High-fidelity Human Avatar Modeling](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.16096/) (2023)
- [Template-Free Single-View 3D Human Digitalization with Diffusion-Guided LRM](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2401.12175/) (2024)
- [Expressive Gaussian Human Avatars from Monocular RGB Video](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.03204/) (2024)
- [XAGen: 3D Expressive Human Avatars Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.13574/) (2023)
- [RELI11D: A Comprehensive Multimodal Human Motion Dataset and Method](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.19501/) (2024)
- [TexDreamer: Towards Zero-Shot High-Fidelity 3D Human Texture Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.12906/) (2024)
- [PERSONA: Personalized Whole-Body 3D Avatar with Pose-Driven Deformations from a Single Image](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2508.09973/) (2025)
- [CanonicalFusion: Generating Drivable 3D Human Avatars from Multiple Images](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.04345/) (2024)
- [MetaCap: Meta-learning Priors from Multi-View Imagery for Sparse-view Human Performance Capture and Rendering](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.18820/) (2024)
- [LIFe-GoM: Generalizable Human Rendering with Learned Iterative Feedback Over Multi-Resolution Gaussians-on-Mesh](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2502.09617/) (2025)
- [TaoAvatar: Real-Time Lifelike Full-Body Talking Avatars for Augmented Reality via 3D Gaussian Splatting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.17032/) (2025)
- [DEGAS: Detailed Expressions on Full-Body Gaussian Avatars](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2408.10588/) (2024)
- [MVHumanNet++: A Large-scale Dataset of Multi-view Daily Dressing Human Captures with Richer Annotations for 3D Human Digitization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.01838/) (2025)
- [SyncHuman: Synchronizing 2D and 3D Generative Models for Single-view Human Reconstruction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2510.07723/) (2025)
- [RePerformer: Immersive Human-centric Volumetric Videos from Playback to Photoreal Reperformance](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.12242/) (2025)
- [MoGA: 3D Generative Avatar Prior for Monocular Gaussian Avatar Reconstruction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2507.23597/) (2025)
- [EVA: Expressive Virtual Avatars from Multi-view Videos](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.15385/) (2025)
- [GeneMAN: Generalizable Single-Image 3D Human Reconstruction from Multi-Source Human Data](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2411.18624/) (2024)
- [SignSplat: Rendering Sign Language via Gaussian Splatting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.02108/) (2025)
- [Semantic Human Mesh Reconstruction with Textures](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.02561/) (2024)

## Abstract (arXiv)

We present X-Avatar, a novel avatar model that captures the full expressiveness of digital humans to bring about life-like experiences in telepresence, AR/VR and beyond. Our method models bodies, hands, facial expressions and appearance in a holistic fashion and can be learned from either full 3D scans or RGB-D data. To achieve this, we propose a part-aware learned forward skinning module that can be driven by the parameter space of SMPL-X, allowing for expressive animation of X-Avatars. To efficiently learn the neural shape and deformation fields, we propose novel part-aware sampling and initialization strategies. This leads to higher fidelity results, especially for smaller body parts while maintaining efficient training despite increased number of articulated bones. To capture the appearance of the avatar with high-frequency details, we extend the geometry and deformation fields with a texture network that is conditioned on pose, facial expression, geometry and the normals of the deformed surface. We show experimentally that our method outperforms strong baselines in both data domains both quantitatively and qualitatively on the animation task. To facilitate future research on expressive avatars we contribute a new dataset, called X-Humans, containing 233 sequences of high-quality textured scans from 20 participants, totalling 35,500 data frames.