# Deep learning for 3D human pose estimation and mesh recovery: A survey

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2402.18844 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2402.18844/

## Key facts

- Cited by 11 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 63 of its 99 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 29 Feb 2024.

## Builds on (most cited first, 30 of 63)

- [Attention Is All You Need](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1706.03762/) (2017)
- [Language Models are Few-Shot Learners](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2005.14165/) (2020)
- [Microsoft COCO: Common Objects in Context](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1405.0312/) (2014)
- [3D Gaussian Splatting for Real-Time Radiance Field Rendering](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2308.04079/) (2023)
- [MLP-Mixer: An all-MLP Architecture for Vision](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2105.01601/) (2021)
- [Deep High-Resolution Representation Learning for Visual Recognition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1908.07919/) (2019)
- [Stacked Hourglass Networks for Human Pose Estimation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1603.06937/) (2016)
- [Efficient Transformers: A Survey](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2009.06732/) (2020)
- [Monocular 3D Human Pose Estimation In The Wild Using Improved CNN Supervision](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1611.09813/) (2016)
- [ICON: Implicit Clothed humans Obtained from Normals](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2112.09127/) (2021)
- [CLIFF: Carrying Location Information in Full Frames into Human Pose and Shape Estimation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2208.00571/) (2022)
- [PaMIR: Parametric Model-Conditioned Implicit Representation for Image-based Human Reconstruction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2007.03858/) (2020)
- [Deep Learning-Based Human Pose Estimation: A Survey](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2012.13392/) (2020)
- [AlphaPose: Whole-Body Regional Multi-Person Pose Estimation and Tracking in Real-Time](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2211.03375/) (2022)
- [Single-Shot Multi-Person 3D Pose Estimation From Monocular RGB](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1712.03453/) (2017)
- [Monocular Expressive Body Regression through Body-Driven Attention](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2008.09062/) (2020)
- [PyMAF-X: Towards Well-aligned Full-body Model Regression from Monocular Images](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2207.06400/) (2022)
- [Collaborative Regression of Expressive Bodies using Moderation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2105.05301/) (2021)
- [Combining Implicit Function Learning and Parametric Models for 3D Human Reconstruction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2007.11432/) (2020)
- [Skeleton-Aware Networks for Deep Motion Retargeting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2005.05732/) (2020)
- [BCNet: Learning Body and Cloth Shape from A Single Image](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2004.00214/) (2020)
- [Geo-PIFu: Geometry and Pixel Aligned Implicit Functions for Single-view Human Reconstruction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2006.08072/) (2020)
- [Recovering 3D Human Mesh from Monocular Images: A Survey](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2203.01923/) (2022)
- [Weakly Supervised 3D Human Pose and Shape Reconstruction with Normalizing Flows](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2003.10350/) (2020)
- [LCR-Net++: Multi-person 2D and 3D Pose Detection in Natural Images](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1803.00455/) (2018)
- [Motion Guided 3D Pose Estimation from Videos](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2004.13985/) (2020)
- [Cross-Attention of Disentangled Modalities for 3D Human Mesh Recovery with Transformers](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2207.13820/) (2022)
- [P-STMO: Pre-Trained Spatial Temporal Many-to-One Model for 3D Human Pose Estimation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2203.07628/) (2022)
- [Monocular Real-Time Volumetric Performance Capture](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2007.13988/) (2020)
- [MPS-NeRF: Generalizable 3D Human Rendering from Multiview Images](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2203.16875/) (2022)

## Built on by (most cited first, 11 of 11)

- [A Survey on 3D Egocentric Human Pose Estimation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.17893/) (2024)
- [M4Human: A Large-Scale Multimodal mmWave Radar Benchmark for Human Mesh Reconstruction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2512.12378/) (2025)
- [Advances in Radiance Field for Dynamic Scene: From Neural Field to Gaussian Field](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.10049/) (2025)
- [Dynamic Graph CNN with Jacobi Kolmogorov-Arnold Networks for 3D Classification of Point Sets](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2506.06296/) (2025)
- [3D Human Pose and Shape Estimation from LiDAR Point Clouds: A Review](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2509.12197/) (2025)
- [On the Use of Hierarchical Vision Foundation Models for Low-Cost Human Mesh Recovery and Pose Estimation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2510.12660/) (2025)
- [PRGCN: A Graph Memory Network for Cross-Sequence Pattern Reuse in 3D Human Pose Estimation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2510.19475/) (2025)
- [A Topology-Aware Graph Convolutional Network for Human Pose Similarity and Action Quality Assessment](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2511.01194/) (2025)
- [A Study on Real-time Object Detection using Deep Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2602.15926/) (2026)
- [SEAL-pose: Enhancing 3D Human Pose Estimation via a Learned Loss for Structural Consistency](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2602.20051/) (2026)
- [Chatting about Upper-Body Expressive Human Pose and Shape Estimation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2604.17959/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

3D human pose estimation and mesh recovery have attracted widespread research interest in many areas, such as computer vision, autonomous driving, and robotics. Deep learning on 3D human pose estimation and mesh recovery has recently thrived, with numerous methods proposed to address different problems in this area. In this paper, to stimulate future research, we present a comprehensive review of recent progress over the past five years in deep learning methods for this area by delving into over 200 references. To the best of our knowledge, this survey is arguably the first to comprehensively cover deep learning methods for 3D human pose estimation, including both single-person and multi-person approaches, as well as human mesh recovery, encompassing methods based on explicit models and implicit representations. We also present comparative results on several publicly available datasets, together with insightful observations and inspiring future research directions. A regularly updated project page can be found at https://github.com/liuyangme/SOTA-3DHPE-HMR.