# HAHA: Highly Articulated Gaussian Human Avatars with Textured Mesh Prior

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2404.01053 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.01053/

## Key facts

- Cited by 31 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 51 of its 66 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 1 Apr 2024.

## Builds on (most cited first, 30 of 51)

- [Adam: A Method for Stochastic Optimization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1412.6980/) (2014)
- [The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Deep Features as a Perceptual Metric](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1801.03924/) (2018)
- [3D Gaussian Splatting for Real-Time Radiance Field Rendering](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2308.04079/) (2023)
- [V-Net: Fully Convolutional Neural Networks for Volumetric Medical Image Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1606.04797/) (2016)
- [Expressive Body Capture: 3D Hands, Face, and Body from a Single Image](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1904.05866/) (2019)
- [PIFu: Pixel-Aligned Implicit Function for High-Resolution Clothed Human Digitization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1905.05172/) (2019)
- [Dynamic 3D Gaussians: Tracking by Persistent Dynamic View Synthesis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2308.09713/) (2023)
- [Mip-Splatting: Alias-free 3D Gaussian Splatting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.16493/) (2023)
- [Neural Body: Implicit Neural Representations with Structured Latent Codes for Novel View Synthesis of Dynamic Humans](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2012.15838/) (2020)
- [VIBE: Video Inference for Human Body Pose and Shape Estimation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1912.05656/) (2019)
- [Modular Primitives for High-Performance Differentiable Rendering](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2011.03277/) (2020)
- [GaussianAvatars: Photorealistic Head Avatars with Rigged 3D Gaussians](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.02069/) (2023)
- [GaussianShader: 3D Gaussian Splatting with Shading Functions for Reflective Surfaces](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.17977/) (2023)
- [Video Based Reconstruction of 3D People Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1803.04758/) (2018)
- [Monocular, One-stage, Regression of Multiple 3D People](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2008.12272/) (2020)
- [Neural Head Avatars from Monocular RGB Videos](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2112.01554/) (2021)
- [3DGS-Avatar: Animatable Avatars via Deformable 3D Gaussian Splatting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.09228/) (2023)
- [GaussianAvatar: Towards Realistic Human Avatar Modeling from a Single Video via Animatable 3D Gaussians](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.02134/) (2023)
- [4D-Rotor Gaussian Splatting: Towards Efficient Novel View Synthesis for Dynamic Scenes](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2402.03307/) (2024)
- [ARCH++: Animation-Ready Clothed Human Reconstruction Revisited](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2108.07845/) (2021)
- [GPS-Gaussian: Generalizable Pixel-wise 3D Gaussian Splatting for Real-time Human Novel View Synthesis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.02155/) (2023)
- [Learning to Reconstruct People in Clothing from a Single RGB Camera](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1903.05885/) (2019)
- [GauHuman: Articulated Gaussian Splatting from Monocular Human Videos](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.02973/) (2023)
- [HumanRF: High-Fidelity Neural Radiance Fields for Humans in Motion](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.06356/) (2023)
- [InstantAvatar: Learning Avatars from Monocular Video in 60 Seconds](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2212.10550/) (2022)
- [Relightable Gaussian Codec Avatars](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.03704/) (2023)
- [Photorealistic Monocular 3D Reconstruction of Humans Wearing Clothing](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2204.08906/) (2022)
- [DynMF: Neural Motion Factorization for Real-time Dynamic View Synthesis with 3D Gaussian Splatting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.00112/) (2023)
- [GART: Gaussian Articulated Template Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.16099/) (2023)
- [Drivable 3D Gaussian Avatars](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.08581/) (2023)

## Built on by (most cited first, 30 of 31)

- [MoSca: Dynamic Gaussian Fusion from Casual Videos via 4D Motion Scaffolds](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2405.17421/) (2024)
- [HumanSplat: Generalizable Single-Image Human Gaussian Splatting with Structure Priors](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.12459/) (2024)
- [Vid2Avatar-Pro: Authentic Avatar from Videos in the Wild via Universal Prior](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.01610/) (2025)
- [BillBoard Splatting (BBSplat): Learnable Textured Primitives for Novel View Synthesis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2411.08508/) (2024)
- [Expressive Gaussian Human Avatars from Monocular RGB Video](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.03204/) (2024)
- [GaussianDreamerPro: Text to Manipulable 3D Gaussians with Highly Enhanced Quality](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.18462/) (2024)
- [FewViewGS: Gaussian Splatting with Few View Matching and Multi-stage Training](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2411.02229/) (2024)
- [Real-time High-fidelity Gaussian Human Avatars with Position-based Interpolation of Spatially Distributed MLPs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2504.12909/) (2025)
- [SqueezeMe: Mobile-Ready Distillation of Gaussian Full-Body Avatars](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2412.15171/) (2024)
- [Gaussian Head & Shoulders: High Fidelity Neural Upper Body Avatars with Anchor Gaussian Guided Texture Warping](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2405.12069/) (2024)
- [SVG-Head: Hybrid Surface-Volumetric Gaussians for High-Fidelity Head Reconstruction and Real-Time Editing](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2508.09597/) (2025)
- [ContraGS: Codebook-Condensed and Trainable Gaussian Splatting for Fast, Memory-Efficient Reconstruction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2509.03775/) (2025)
- [Parametric Gaussian Human Model: Generalizable Prior for Efficient and Realistic Human Avatar Modeling](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2506.06645/) (2025)
- [Deblur-Avatar: Animatable Avatars from Motion-Blurred Monocular Videos](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2501.13335/) (2025)
- [SVAD: From Single Image to 3D Avatar via Synthetic Data Generation with Video Diffusion and Data Augmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.05475/) (2025)
- [SOAR: Self-Occluded Avatar Recovery from a Single Video In the Wild](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.23800/) (2024)
- [Hybrid Mesh-Gaussian Representation for Efficient Indoor Scene Reconstruction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2506.06988/) (2025)
- [Learning Efficient and Generalizable Human Representation with Human Gaussian Model](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2507.18758/) (2025)
- [On the Skinning of Gaussian Avatars](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2509.11411/) (2025)
- [Frequency-Decomposed Avatar Representation for Varying Camera Distances](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2512.03593/) (2025)
- [NBAvatar: Neural Billboards Avatars with Realistic Hand-Face Interaction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.12063/) (2026)
- [GSAC: Leveraging Gaussian Splatting for Photorealistic Avatar Creation with Unity Integration](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2504.12999/) (2025)
- [GaussianGAN: Real-Time Photorealistic controllable Human Avatars](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2509.01681/) (2025)
- [HumanCrafter: Synergizing Generalizable Human Reconstruction and Semantic 3D Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2511.00468/) (2025)
- [SkelSplat: Robust Multi-view 3D Human Pose Estimation with Differentiable Gaussian Rendering](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2511.08294/) (2025)
- [Gaussian Pixel Codec Avatars: A Hybrid Representation for Efficient Rendering](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2512.15711/) (2025)
- [ShapeGaussian: High-Fidelity 4D Human Reconstruction in Monocular Videos via Vision Priors](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2602.05572/) (2026)
- [LiftAvatar: Kinematic-Space Completion for Expression-Controlled 3D Gaussian Avatar Animation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.02129/) (2026)
- [Generator-Refiner-Examiner: A Tri-Module Data Augmentation Framework for 3D Human Avatar Learning from Monocular Videos](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2605.23555/) (2026)
- [T3HG-Editor: Text-driven 3D Human Garment Editing with Body Priors Embedded in SMPL-X](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2607.13654/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

We present HAHA - a novel approach for animatable human avatar generation from monocular input videos. The proposed method relies on learning the trade-off between the use of Gaussian splatting and a textured mesh for efficient and high fidelity rendering. We demonstrate its efficiency to animate and render full-body human avatars controlled via the SMPL-X parametric model. Our model learns to apply Gaussian splatting only in areas of the SMPL-X mesh where it is necessary, like hair and out-of-mesh clothing. This results in a minimal number of Gaussians being used to represent the full avatar, and reduced rendering artifacts. This allows us to handle the animation of small body parts such as fingers that are traditionally disregarded. We demonstrate the effectiveness of our approach on two open datasets: SnapshotPeople and X-Humans. Our method demonstrates on par reconstruction quality to the state-of-the-art on SnapshotPeople, while using less than a third of Gaussians. HAHA outperforms previous state-of-the-art on novel poses from X-Humans both quantitatively and qualitatively.