# PointHPS: Cascaded 3D Human Pose and Shape Estimation from Point Clouds

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2308.14492 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2308.14492/

## Key facts

- Cited by 9 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 55 of its 72 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 28 Aug 2023.

## Builds on (most cited first, 30 of 55)

- [Attention Is All You Need](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1706.03762/) (2017)
- [PointNet: Deep Learning on Point Sets for 3D Classification and Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1612.00593/) (2016)
- [PointNet++: Deep Hierarchical Feature Learning on Point Sets in a Metric Space](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1706.02413/) (2017)
- [Dynamic Graph CNN for Learning on Point Clouds](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1801.07829/) (2018)
- [Expressive Body Capture: 3D Hands, Face, and Body from a Single Image](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1904.05866/) (2019)
- [Deep High-Resolution Representation Learning for Human Pose Estimation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1902.09212/) (2019)
- [Stacked Hourglass Networks for Human Pose Estimation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1603.06937/) (2016)
- [End-to-end Recovery of Human Shape and Pose](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1712.06584/) (2017)
- [Open3D: A Modern Library for 3D Data Processing](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1801.09847/) (2018)
- [Keep it SMPL: Automatic Estimation of 3D Human Pose and Shape from a Single Image](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1607.08128/) (2016)
- [Learning to Reconstruct 3D Human Pose and Shape via Model-fitting in the Loop](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1909.12828/) (2019)
- [VIBE: Video Inference for Human Body Pose and Shape Estimation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1912.05656/) (2019)
- [Hybrid Task Cascade for Instance Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1901.07518/) (2019)
- [Selective Kernel Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1903.06586/) (2019)
- [Efficient Attention: Attention with Linear Complexities](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1812.01243/) (2018)
- [Learning from Synthetic Humans](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1701.01370/) (2017)
- [Cascaded Pyramid Network for Multi-Person Pose Estimation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1711.07319/) (2017)
- [PARE: Part Attention Regressor for 3D Human Body Estimation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2104.08527/) (2021)
- [Learning 3D Human Dynamics from Video](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1812.01601/) (2018)
- [HybrIK: A Hybrid Analytical-Neural Inverse Kinematics Solution for 3D Human Pose and Shape Estimation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2011.14672/) (2020)
- [I2L-MeshNet: Image-to-Lixel Prediction Network for Accurate 3D Human Pose and Mesh Estimation from a Single RGB Image](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2008.03713/) (2020)
- [Convolutional Mesh Regression for Single-Image Human Shape Reconstruction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1905.03244/) (2019)
- [CLIFF: Carrying Location Information in Full Frames into Human Pose and Shape Estimation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2208.00571/) (2022)
- [Learning to Estimate 3D Human Pose and Shape from a Single Color Image](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1805.04092/) (2018)
- [Monocular, One-stage, Regression of Multiple 3D People](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2008.12272/) (2020)
- [STAR: Sparse Trained Articulated Human Body Regressor](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2008.08535/) (2020)
- [Long-term Human Motion Prediction with Scene Context](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2007.03672/) (2020)
- [Neural Body Fitting: Unifying Deep Learning and Model-Based Human Pose and Shape Estimation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1808.05942/) (2018)
- [Beyond Static Features for Temporally Consistent 3D Human Pose and Shape from a Video](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2011.08627/) (2020)
- [3D-CODED : 3D Correspondences by Deep Deformation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1806.05228/) (2018)

## Built on by (most cited first, 9 of 9)

- [LiveHPS: LiDAR-based Scene-level Human Pose and Shape Estimation in Free Environment](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2402.17171/) (2024)
- [LiDAR-HMR: 3D Human Mesh Recovery from LiDAR](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.11971/) (2023)
- [LiveHPS++: Robust and Coherent Motion Capture in Dynamic Free Environment](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.09833/) (2024)
- [Robust Human Registration with Body Part Segmentation on Noisy Point Clouds](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2504.03602/) (2025)
- [3D Human Mesh Estimation from Single View RGBD](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2508.08178/) (2025)
- [Point2Pose: A Generative Framework for 3D Human Pose Estimation with Multi-View Point Cloud Dataset](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2512.10321/) (2025)
- [Sparkle: A Robust and Versatile Representation for Point Cloud based Human Motion Capture](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2604.00857/) (2026)
- [B'ezier Degradation Modeling for LiDAR-based Human Motion Capture](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2605.19620/) (2026)
- [Sen-Cap: Sensor-Flexible and Noise-Resilient Human Motion Capture via LiDAR-Camera Integration](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2608.02285/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Human pose and shape estimation (HPS) has attracted increasing attention in recent years. While most existing studies focus on HPS from 2D images or videos with inherent depth ambiguity, there are surging need to investigate HPS from 3D point clouds as depth sensors have been frequently employed in commercial devices. However, real-world sensory 3D points are usually noisy and incomplete, and also human bodies could have different poses of high diversity. To tackle these challenges, we propose a principled framework, PointHPS, for accurate 3D HPS from point clouds captured in real-world settings, which iteratively refines point features through a cascaded architecture. Specifically, each stage of PointHPS performs a series of downsampling and upsampling operations to extract and collate both local and global cues, which are further enhanced by two novel modules: 1) Cross-stage Feature Fusion (CFF) for multi-scale feature propagation that allows information to flow effectively through the stages, and 2) Intermediate Feature Enhancement (IFE) for body-aware feature aggregation that improves feature quality after each stage. To facilitate a comprehensive study under various scenarios, we conduct our experiments on two large-scale benchmarks, comprising i) a dataset that features diverse subjects and actions captured by real commercial sensors in a laboratory environment, and ii) controlled synthetic data generated with realistic considerations such as clothed humans in crowded outdoor scenes. Extensive experiments demonstrate that PointHPS, with its powerful point feature extraction and processing scheme, outperforms State-of-the-Art methods by significant margins across the board. Homepage: https://caizhongang.github.io/projects/PointHPS/.