# PrimDiffusion: Volumetric Primitives Diffusion for 3D Human Generation

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2312.04559 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.04559/

## Key facts

- Cited by 34 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Placed in 3D, point cloud and scene generation, one of 14 directions in Diffusion models.
- Builds on 53 of its 66 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 7 Dec 2023.

## Placed in

- Diffusion models / [3D, point cloud and scene generation](https://mlsanity.com/diffusion/3d-point-cloud-and-scene-generation/)

## Builds on (most cited first, 30 of 53)

- [Learning Transferable Visual Models From Natural Language Supervision](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.00020/) (2021)
- [Denoising Diffusion Probabilistic Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2006.11239/) (2020)
- [U-Net: Convolutional Networks for Biomedical Image Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1505.04597/) (2015)
- [High-Resolution Image Synthesis with Latent Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2112.10752/) (2021)
- [The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Deep Features as a Perceptual Metric](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1801.03924/) (2018)
- [Deep Unsupervised Learning using Nonequilibrium Thermodynamics](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1503.03585/) (2015)
- [Hierarchical Text-Conditional Image Generation with CLIP Latents](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2204.06125/) (2022)
- [Photorealistic Text-to-Image Diffusion Models with Deep Language Understanding](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2205.11487/) (2022)
- [A Style-Based Generator Architecture for Generative Adversarial Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1812.04948/) (2018)
- [Rethinking the Inception Architecture for Computer Vision](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1512.00567/) (2015)
- [Generative Modeling by Estimating Gradients of the Data Distribution](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1907.05600/) (2019)
- [GLIDE: Towards Photorealistic Image Generation and Editing with Text-Guided Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2112.10741/) (2021)
- [DreamFusion: Text-to-3D using 2D Diffusion](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2209.14988/) (2022)
- [ShapeNet: An Information-Rich 3D Model Repository](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1512.03012/) (2015)
- [Vision Transformers for Dense Prediction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.13413/) (2021)
- [CLEVR: A Diagnostic Dataset for Compositional Language and Elementary Visual Reasoning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1612.06890/) (2016)
- [Demystifying MMD GANs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1801.01401/) (2018)
- [AMASS: Archive of Motion Capture as Surface Shapes](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1904.03278/) (2019)
- [Efficient Geometry-aware 3D Generative Adversarial Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2112.07945/) (2021)
- [Direct Voxel Grid Optimization: Super-fast Convergence for Radiance Fields Reconstruction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2111.11215/) (2021)
- [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)
- [MotionDiffuse: Text-Driven Human Motion Generation with Diffusion Model](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2208.15001/) (2022)
- [Diffusion Probabilistic Models for 3D Point Cloud Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.01458/) (2021)
- [GRAF: Generative Radiance Fields for 3D-Aware Image Synthesis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2007.02442/) (2020)
- [Neural Body: Implicit Neural Representations with Structured Latent Codes for Novel View Synthesis of Dynamic Humans](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2012.15838/) (2020)
- [LION: Latent Point Diffusion Models for 3D Shape Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2210.06978/) (2022)
- [3D Shape Generation and Completion through Point-Voxel Diffusion](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2104.03670/) (2021)
- [StyleNeRF: A Style-based 3D-Aware Generator for High-resolution Image Synthesis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2110.08985/) (2021)
- [Rodin: A Generative Model for Sculpting 3D Digital Avatars Using Diffusion](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2212.06135/) (2022)

## Built on by (most cited first, 30 of 34)

- [LGM: Large Multi-View Gaussian Model for High-Resolution 3D Content Creation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2402.05054/) (2024)
- [3DTopia-XL: Scaling High-quality 3D Asset Generation via Primitive Diffusion](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2409.12957/) (2024)
- [EdgeRunner: Auto-regressive Auto-encoder for Artistic Mesh Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2409.18114/) (2024)
- [3DTopia: Large Text-to-3D Generation Model with Hybrid Diffusion Priors](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.02234/) (2024)
- [Efficient Part-level 3D Object Generation via Dual Volume Packing](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2506.09980/) (2025)
- [Generative Gaussian Splatting for Unbounded 3D City Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.06526/) (2024)
- [Gaussian Variation Field Diffusion for High-fidelity Video-to-4D Synthesis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2507.23785/) (2025)
- [Relightable Full-Body Gaussian Codec Avatars](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2501.14726/) (2025)
- [Expressive Gaussian Human Avatars from Monocular RGB Video](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.03204/) (2024)
- [StructLDM: Structured Latent Diffusion for 3D Human Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.01241/) (2024)
- [Compositional Generative Model of Unbounded 4D Cities](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2501.08983/) (2025)
- [Modeling and Driving Human Body Soundfields through Acoustic Primitives](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.13083/) (2024)
- [GaussianStego: A Generalizable Stenography Pipeline for Generative 3D Gaussians Splatting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.01301/) (2024)
- [Diffusion Models in 3D Vision: A Survey](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.04738/) (2024)
- [SqueezeMe: Mobile-Ready Distillation of Gaussian Full-Body Avatars](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2412.15171/) (2024)
- [E3Gen: Efficient, Expressive and Editable Avatars Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2405.19203/) (2024)
- [MoGA: 3D Generative Avatar Prior for Monocular Gaussian Avatar Reconstruction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2507.23597/) (2025)
- [Disentangled Clothed Avatar Generation with Layered Representation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2501.04631/) (2025)
- [HumanGif: Single-View Human Diffusion with Generative Prior](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2502.12080/) (2025)
- [Generative Human Geometry Distribution](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.01448/) (2025)
- [MicroDreamer: Efficient 3D Generation in ~20 Seconds by Score-based Iterative Reconstruction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.19525/) (2024)
- [Dream, Lift, Animate: From Single Images to Animatable Gaussian Avatars](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2507.15979/) (2025)
- [WildAvatar: Learning In-the-wild 3D Avatars from the Web](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.02165/) (2024)
- [Sculpt4D: Generating 4D Shapes via Sparse-Attention Diffusion Transformers](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2604.21592/) (2026)
- [S2R-HDR: A Large-Scale Rendered Dataset for HDR Fusion](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2504.07667/) (2025)
- [PARTE: Part-Guided Texturing for 3D Human Reconstruction from a Single Image](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2507.17332/) (2025)
- [T2Bs: Text-to-Character Blendshapes via Video Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2509.10678/) (2025)
- [Human Geometry Distribution for 3D Animation Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2512.07459/) (2025)
- [Relightable and Dynamic Gaussian Avatar Reconstruction from Monocular Video](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2512.09335/) (2025)
- [Hyper Diffusion Avatars: Dynamic Human Avatar Generation using Network Weight Space Diffusion](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2509.04145/) (2025)

## Abstract (arXiv)

We present PrimDiffusion, the first diffusion-based framework for 3D human generation. Devising diffusion models for 3D human generation is difficult due to the intensive computational cost of 3D representations and the articulated topology of 3D humans. To tackle these challenges, our key insight is operating the denoising diffusion process directly on a set of volumetric primitives, which models the human body as a number of small volumes with radiance and kinematic information. This volumetric primitives representation marries the capacity of volumetric representations with the efficiency of primitive-based rendering. Our PrimDiffusion framework has three appealing properties: 1) compact and expressive parameter space for the diffusion model, 2) flexible 3D representation that incorporates human prior, and 3) decoder-free rendering for efficient novel-view and novel-pose synthesis. Extensive experiments validate that PrimDiffusion outperforms state-of-the-art methods in 3D human generation. Notably, compared to GAN-based methods, our PrimDiffusion supports real-time rendering of high-quality 3D humans at a resolution of 512×512 once the denoising process is done. We also demonstrate the flexibility of our framework on training-free conditional generation such as texture transfer and 3D inpainting.