# CharNeRF: 3D Character Generation from Concept Art

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2402.17115 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2402.17115/

## Key facts

- No citing papers in the map yet (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 29 of its 41 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 27 Feb 2024.

## Builds on (most cited first, 29 of 29)

- [Attention Is All You Need](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1706.03762/) (2017)
- [The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Deep Features as a Perceptual Metric](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1801.03924/) (2018)
- [Instant Neural Graphics Primitives with a Multiresolution Hash Encoding](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2201.05989/) (2022)
- [DreamFusion: Text-to-3D using 2D Diffusion](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2209.14988/) (2022)
- [Plenoxels: Radiance Fields without Neural Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2112.05131/) (2021)
- [pixelNeRF: Neural Radiance Fields from One or Few Images](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2012.02190/) (2020)
- [Zero-1-to-3: Zero-shot One Image to 3D Object](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.11328/) (2023)
- [End-to-end Recovery of Human Shape and Pose](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1712.06584/) (2017)
- [PIFu: Pixel-Aligned Implicit Function for High-Resolution Clothed Human Digitization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1905.05172/) (2019)
- [Block-NeRF: Scalable Large Scene Neural View Synthesis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2202.05263/) (2022)
- [RegNeRF: Regularizing Neural Radiance Fields for View Synthesis from Sparse Inputs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2112.00724/) (2021)
- [Score Jacobian Chaining: Lifting Pretrained 2D Diffusion Models for 3D Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2212.00774/) (2022)
- [PIFuHD: Multi-Level Pixel-Aligned Implicit Function for High-Resolution 3D Human Digitization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2004.00452/) (2020)
- [HumanNeRF: Free-viewpoint Rendering of Moving People from Monocular Video](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2201.04127/) (2022)
- [RealFusion: 360deg Reconstruction of Any Object from a Single Image](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2302.10663/) (2023)
- [Novel View Synthesis with Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2210.04628/) (2022)
- [ICON: Implicit Clothed humans Obtained from Normals](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2112.09127/) (2021)
- [A-NeRF: Articulated Neural Radiance Fields for Learning Human Shape, Appearance, and Pose](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2102.06199/) (2021)
- [PaMIR: Parametric Model-Conditioned Implicit Representation for Image-based Human Reconstruction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2007.03858/) (2020)
- [GeoNeRF: Generalizing NeRF with Geometry Priors](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2111.13539/) (2021)
- [DeepHuman: 3D Human Reconstruction from a Single Image](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1903.06473/) (2019)
- [InfoNeRF: Ray Entropy Minimization for Few-Shot Neural Volume Rendering](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2112.15399/) (2021)
- [NerfDiff: Single-image View Synthesis with NeRF-guided Distillation from 3D-aware Diffusion](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2302.10109/) (2023)
- [ARCH++: Animation-Ready Clothed Human Reconstruction Revisited](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2108.07845/) (2021)
- [BodyNet: Volumetric Inference of 3D Human Body Shapes](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1804.04875/) (2018)
- [Procedural Content Generation via Machine Learning (PCGML)](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1702.00539/) (2017)
- [KeypointNeRF: Generalizing Image-based Volumetric Avatars using Relative Spatial Encoding of Keypoints](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2205.04992/) (2022)
- [SiCloPe: Silhouette-Based Clothed People](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1901.00049/) (2018)
- [Portrait Neural Radiance Fields from a Single Image](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2012.05903/) (2020)

## Abstract (arXiv)

3D modeling holds significant importance in the realms of AR/VR and gaming, allowing for both artistic creativity and practical applications. However, the process is often time-consuming and demands a high level of skill. In this paper, we present a novel approach to create volumetric representations of 3D characters from consistent turnaround concept art, which serves as the standard input in the 3D modeling industry. While Neural Radiance Field (NeRF) has been a game-changer in image-based 3D reconstruction, to the best of our knowledge, there is no known research that optimizes the pipeline for concept art. To harness the potential of concept art, with its defined body poses and specific view angles, we propose encoding it as priors for our model. We train the network to make use of these priors for various 3D points through a learnable view-direction-attended multi-head self-attention layer. Additionally, we demonstrate that a combination of ray sampling and surface sampling enhances the inference capabilities of our network. Our model is able to generate high-quality 360-degree views of characters. Subsequently, we provide a simple guideline to better leverage our model to extract the 3D mesh. It is important to note that our model's inferencing capabilities are influenced by the training data's characteristics, primarily focusing on characters with a single head, two arms, and two legs. Nevertheless, our methodology remains versatile and adaptable to concept art from diverse subject matters, without imposing any specific assumptions on the data.