# NCHO: Unsupervised Learning for Neural 3D Composition of Humans and Objects

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2305.14345 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.14345/

## Key facts

- Cited by 17 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 66 of its 80 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 23 May 2023.

## Builds on (most cited first, 30 of 66)

- [High-Resolution Image Synthesis with Latent Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2112.10752/) (2021)
- [Diffusion Models Beat GANs on Image Synthesis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2105.05233/) (2021)
- [Deep Unsupervised Learning using Nonequilibrium Thermodynamics](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1503.03585/) (2015)
- [A Style-Based Generator Architecture for Generative Adversarial Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1812.04948/) (2018)
- [Generative Adversarial Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2203.00667/) (2022)
- [Auto-Encoding Variational Bayes](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1312.6114/) (2013)
- [Analyzing and Improving the Image Quality of StyleGAN](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1912.04958/) (2019)
- [Progressive Growing of GANs for Improved Quality, Stability, and Variation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1710.10196/) (2017)
- [ShapeNet: An Information-Rich 3D Model Repository](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1512.03012/) (2015)
- [DeepSDF: Learning Continuous Signed Distance Functions for Shape Representation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1901.05103/) (2019)
- [Implicit Neural Representations with Periodic Activation Functions](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2006.09661/) (2020)
- [Unsupervised Representation Learning with Deep Convolutional Generative Adversarial Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1511.06434/) (2015)
- [Occupancy Networks: Learning 3D Reconstruction in Function Space](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1812.03828/) (2018)
- [Arbitrary Style Transfer in Real-time with Adaptive Instance Normalization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1703.06868/) (2017)
- [Expressive Body Capture: 3D Hands, Face, and Body from a Single Image](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1904.05866/) (2019)
- [Efficient Geometry-aware 3D Generative Adversarial Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2112.07945/) (2021)
- [Cascaded Diffusion Models for High Fidelity Image Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2106.15282/) (2021)
- [Realtime Multi-Person 2D Pose Estimation using Part Affinity Fields](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1611.08050/) (2016)
- [Learning Implicit Fields for Generative Shape Modeling](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1812.02822/) (2018)
- [PIFu: Pixel-Aligned Implicit Function for High-Resolution Clothed Human Digitization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1905.05172/) (2019)
- [GIRAFFE: Representing Scenes as Compositional Generative Neural Feature Fields](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2011.12100/) (2020)
- [Implicit Geometric Regularization for Learning Shapes](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2002.10099/) (2020)
- [Keep it SMPL: Automatic Estimation of 3D Human Pose and Shape from a Single Image](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1607.08128/) (2016)
- [GRAF: Generative Radiance Fields for 3D-Aware Image Synthesis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2007.02442/) (2020)
- [Neural Fields in Visual Computing and Beyond](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2111.11426/) (2021)
- [PIFuHD: Multi-Level Pixel-Aligned Implicit Function for High-Resolution 3D Human Digitization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2004.00452/) (2020)
- [Neural Scene Graphs for Dynamic Scenes](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2011.10379/) (2020)
- [ICON: Implicit Clothed humans Obtained from Normals](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2112.09127/) (2021)
- [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)

## Built on by (most cited first, 17 of 17)

- [InterDiff: Generating 3D Human-Object Interactions with Physics-Informed Diffusion](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2308.16905/) (2023)
- [TeCH: Text-guided Reconstruction of Lifelike Clothed Humans](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2308.08545/) (2023)
- [PhysHOI: Physics-Based Imitation of Dynamic Human-Object Interaction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.04393/) (2023)
- [InterMimic: Towards Universal Whole-Body Control for Physics-Based Human-Object Interactions](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2502.20390/) (2025)
- [InterDreamer: Zero-Shot Text to 3D Dynamic Human-Object Interaction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.19652/) (2024)
- [Template Free Reconstruction of Human-object Interaction with Procedural Interaction Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.07063/) (2023)
- [InterAct: Advancing Large-Scale Versatile 3D Human-Object Interaction Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2509.09555/) (2025)
- [GALA: Generating Animatable Layered Assets from a Single Scan](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2401.12979/) (2024)
- [TriDi: Trilateral Diffusion of 3D Humans, Objects, and Interactions](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2412.06334/) (2024)
- [PERSE: Personalized 3D Generative Avatars from A Single Portrait](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2412.21206/) (2024)
- [Ins-HOI: Instance Aware Human-Object Interactions Recovery](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.09641/) (2023)
- [PEGASUS: Personalized Generative 3D Avatars with Composable Attributes](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2402.10636/) (2024)
- [Target-Aware Video Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.18950/) (2025)
- [HairCUP: Hair Compositional Universal Prior for 3D Gaussian Avatars](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2507.19481/) (2025)
- [DAViD: Modeling Dynamic Affordance of 3D Objects Using Pre-trained Video Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2501.08333/) (2025)
- [COLLAGE: Collaborative Human-Agent Interaction Generation using Hierarchical Latent Diffusion and Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2409.20502/) (2024)
- [SynAgent: Generalizable Cooperative Humanoid Manipulation via Solo-to-Cooperative Agent Synergy](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2604.18557/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Deep generative models have been recently extended to synthesizing 3D digital humans. However, previous approaches treat clothed humans as a single chunk of geometry without considering the compositionality of clothing and accessories. As a result, individual items cannot be naturally composed into novel identities, leading to limited expressiveness and controllability of generative 3D avatars. While several methods attempt to address this by leveraging synthetic data, the interaction between humans and objects is not authentic due to the domain gap, and manual asset creation is difficult to scale for a wide variety of objects. In this work, we present a novel framework for learning a compositional generative model of humans and objects (backpacks, coats, scarves, and more) from real-world 3D scans. Our compositional model is interaction-aware, meaning the spatial relationship between humans and objects, and the mutual shape change by physical contact is fully incorporated. The key challenge is that, since humans and objects are in contact, their 3D scans are merged into a single piece. To decompose them without manual annotations, we propose to leverage two sets of 3D scans of a single person with and without objects. Our approach learns to decompose objects and naturally compose them back into a generative human model in an unsupervised manner. Despite our simple setup requiring only the capture of a single subject with objects, our experiments demonstrate the strong generalization of our model by enabling the natural composition of objects to diverse identities in various poses and the composition of multiple objects, which is unseen in training data. https://taeksuu.github.io/ncho/