# ActorsNeRF: Animatable Few-shot Human Rendering with Generalizable NeRFs

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2304.14401 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2304.14401/

## Key facts

- Cited by 21 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 41 of its 56 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 27 Apr 2023.

## Builds on (most cited first, 30 of 41)

- [Deep Residual Learning for Image Recognition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1512.03385/) (2015)
- [Learning Transferable Visual Models From Natural Language Supervision](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.00020/) (2021)
- [The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Deep Features as a Perceptual Metric](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1801.03924/) (2018)
- [pixelNeRF: Neural Radiance Fields from One or Few Images](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2012.02190/) (2020)
- [D-NeRF: Neural Radiance Fields for Dynamic Scenes](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2011.13961/) (2020)
- [Nerfies: Deformable Neural Radiance Fields](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2011.12948/) (2020)
- [Neural Scene Flow Fields for Space-Time View Synthesis of Dynamic Scenes](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2011.13084/) (2020)
- [MVSNeRF: Fast Generalizable Radiance Field Reconstruction from Multi-View Stereo](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.15595/) (2021)
- [Depth-supervised NeRF: Fewer Views and Faster Training for Free](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2107.02791/) (2021)
- [IBRNet: Learning Multi-View Image-Based Rendering](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2102.13090/) (2021)
- [Neural Body: Implicit Neural Representations with Structured Latent Codes for Novel View Synthesis of Dynamic Humans](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2012.15838/) (2020)
- [RegNeRF: Regularizing Neural Radiance Fields for View Synthesis from Sparse Inputs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2112.00724/) (2021)
- [AI Choreographer: Music Conditioned 3D Dance Generation with AIST++](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2101.08779/) (2021)
- [HumanNeRF: Free-viewpoint Rendering of Moving People from Monocular Video](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2201.04127/) (2022)
- [Putting NeRF on a Diet: Semantically Consistent Few-Shot View Synthesis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2104.00677/) (2021)
- [PointRend: Image Segmentation as Rendering](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1912.08193/) (2019)
- [Dynamic View Synthesis from Dynamic Monocular Video](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2105.06468/) (2021)
- [Space-time Neural Irradiance Fields for Free-Viewpoint Video](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2011.12950/) (2020)
- [Animatable Neural Radiance Fields for Modeling Dynamic Human Bodies](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2105.02872/) (2021)
- [Fast Dynamic Radiance Fields with Time-Aware Neural Voxels](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2205.15285/) (2022)
- [Dense Depth Priors for Neural Radiance Fields from Sparse Input Views](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2112.03288/) (2021)
- [NeuMan: Neural Human Radiance Field from a Single Video](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2203.12575/) (2022)
- [Learned Initializations for Optimizing Coordinate-Based Neural Representations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2012.02189/) (2020)
- [A-NeRF: Articulated Neural Radiance Fields for Learning Human Shape, Appearance, and Pose](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2102.06199/) (2021)
- [BANMo: Building Animatable 3D Neural Models from Many Casual Videos](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2112.12761/) (2021)
- [Neural Articulated Radiance Field](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2104.03110/) (2021)
- [TAVA: Template-free Animatable Volumetric Actors](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2206.08929/) (2022)
- [Neural Human Performer: Learning Generalizable Radiance Fields for Human Performance Rendering](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2109.07448/) (2021)
- [H-NeRF: Neural Radiance Fields for Rendering and Temporal Reconstruction of Humans in Motion](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2110.13746/) (2021)
- [ARAH: Animatable Volume Rendering of Articulated Human SDFs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2210.10036/) (2022)

## Built on by (most cited first, 21 of 21)

- [Champ: Controllable and Consistent Human Image Animation with 3D Parametric Guidance](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.14781/) (2024)
- [SIFU: Side-view Conditioned Implicit Function for Real-world Usable Clothed Human Reconstruction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.06704/) (2023)
- [HumanSplat: Generalizable Single-Image Human Gaussian Splatting with Structure Priors](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.12459/) (2024)
- [Learning Generalizable Feature Fields for Mobile Manipulation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.07563/) (2024)
- [OHTA: One-shot Hand Avatar via Data-driven Implicit Priors](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2402.18969/) (2024)
- [A Survey on 3D Human Avatar Modeling -- From Reconstruction to Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.04253/) (2024)
- [Neural Radiance Field-based Visual Rendering: A Comprehensive Review](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.00714/) (2024)
- [LIFe-GoM: Generalizable Human Rendering with Learned Iterative Feedback Over Multi-Resolution Gaussians-on-Mesh](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2502.09617/) (2025)
- [Semantically-aware Neural Radiance Fields for Visual Scene Understanding: A Comprehensive Review](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2402.11141/) (2024)
- [HumanRAM: Feed-forward Human Reconstruction and Animation Model using Transformers](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2506.03118/) (2025)
- [TalkinNeRF: Animatable Neural Fields for Full-Body Talking Humans](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2409.16666/) (2024)
- [Motion-Oriented Compositional Neural Radiance Fields for Monocular Dynamic Human Modeling](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.11962/) (2024)
- [MI-NeRF: Learning a Single Face NeRF from Multiple Identities](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.19920/) (2024)
- [Generalizable Neural Human Renderer](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.14199/) (2024)
- [Gaussian Control with Hierarchical Semantic Graphs in 3D Human Recovery](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2405.12477/) (2024)
- [MIGS: Multi-Identity Gaussian Splatting via Tensor Decomposition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.07284/) (2024)
- [NToP: NeRF-Powered Large-scale Dataset Generation for 2D and 3D Human Pose Estimation in Top-View Fisheye Images](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2402.18196/) (2024)
- [HuGDiffusion: Generalizable Single-Image Human Rendering via 3D Gaussian Diffusion](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2501.15008/) (2025)
- [MaintaAvatar: A Maintainable Avatar Based on Neural Radiance Fields by Continual Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2502.02372/) (2025)
- [ShowMak3r: Compositional TV Show Reconstruction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2504.19584/) (2025)
- [Blur2Sharp: Human Novel Pose and View Synthesis with Generative Prior Refinement](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2512.08215/) (2025)

## Abstract (arXiv)

While NeRF-based human representations have shown impressive novel view synthesis results, most methods still rely on a large number of images / views for training. In this work, we propose a novel animatable NeRF called ActorsNeRF. It is first pre-trained on diverse human subjects, and then adapted with few-shot monocular video frames for a new actor with unseen poses. Building on previous generalizable NeRFs with parameter sharing using a ConvNet encoder, ActorsNeRF further adopts two human priors to capture the large human appearance, shape, and pose variations. Specifically, in the encoded feature space, we will first align different human subjects in a category-level canonical space, and then align the same human from different frames in an instance-level canonical space for rendering. We quantitatively and qualitatively demonstrate that ActorsNeRF significantly outperforms the existing state-of-the-art on few-shot generalization to new people and poses on multiple datasets. Project Page: https://jitengmu.github.io/ActorsNeRF/