# SignAvatar: Sign Language 3D Motion Reconstruction and Generation

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2405.07974 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2405.07974/

## Key facts

- Cited by 14 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 39 of its 55 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 13 May 2024.

## Builds on (most cited first, 30 of 39)

- [Learning Transferable Visual Models From Natural Language Supervision](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.00020/) (2021)
- [Language Models are Few-Shot Learners](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2005.14165/) (2020)
- [Masked Autoencoders Are Scalable Vision Learners](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2111.06377/) (2021)
- [A Style-Based Generator Architecture for Generative Adversarial Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1812.04948/) (2018)
- [Zero-Shot Text-to-Image Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2102.12092/) (2021)
- [Expressive Body Capture: 3D Hands, Face, and Body from a Single Image](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1904.05866/) (2019)
- [On the Continuity of Rotation Representations in Neural Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1812.07035/) (2018)
- [Spatial Temporal Graph Convolutional Networks for Skeleton-Based Action Recognition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1801.07455/) (2018)
- [Realtime Multi-Person 2D Pose Estimation using Part Affinity Fields](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1611.08050/) (2016)
- [StyleCLIP: Text-Driven Manipulation of StyleGAN Imagery](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.17249/) (2021)
- [End-to-end Recovery of Human Shape and Pose](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1712.06584/) (2017)
- [Learning to Reconstruct 3D Human Pose and Shape via Model-fitting in the Loop](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1909.12828/) (2019)
- [StackGAN: Text to Photo-realistic Image Synthesis with Stacked Generative Adversarial Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1612.03242/) (2016)
- [Action-Conditioned 3D Human Motion Synthesis with Transformer VAE](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2104.05670/) (2021)
- [Unicoder-VL: A Universal Encoder for Vision and Language by Cross-modal Pre-training](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1908.06066/) (2019)
- [Action2Motion: Conditioned Generation of 3D Human Motions](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2007.15240/) (2020)
- [Learning joint reconstruction of hands and manipulated objects](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1904.05767/) (2019)
- [PARE: Part Attention Regressor for 3D Human Body Estimation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2104.08527/) (2021)
- [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)
- [EMOCA: Emotion Driven Monocular Face Capture and Animation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2204.11312/) (2022)
- [PyMAF: 3D Human Pose and Shape Regression with Pyramidal Mesh Alignment Feedback Loop](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.16507/) (2021)
- [Total Capture: A 3D Deformation Model for Tracking Faces, Hands, and Bodies](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1801.01615/) (2018)
- [Word-level Deep Sign Language Recognition from Video: A New Large-scale Dataset and Methods Comparison](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1910.11006/) (2019)
- [Beyond Static Features for Temporally Consistent 3D Human Pose and Shape from a Video](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2011.08627/) (2020)
- [Monocular Expressive Body Regression through Body-Driven Attention](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2008.09062/) (2020)
- [Weakly-Supervised Mesh-Convolutional Hand Reconstruction in the Wild](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2004.01946/) (2020)
- [Collaborative Regression of Expressive Bodies using Moderation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2105.05301/) (2021)
- [Progressive Transformers for End-to-End Sign Language Production](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2004.14874/) (2020)
- [Text-Adaptive Generative Adversarial Networks: Manipulating Images with Natural Language](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1810.11919/) (2018)

## Built on by (most cited first, 14 of 14)

- [Signs as Tokens: A Retrieval-Enhanced Multilingual Sign Language Generator](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2411.17799/) (2024)
- [Ig3D: Integrating 3D Face Representations in Facial Expression Inference](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2408.16907/) (2024)
- [Text-Driven 3D Hand Motion Generation from Sign Language Data](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2508.15902/) (2025)
- [SiLVERScore: Semantically-Aware Embeddings for Sign Language Generation Evaluation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2509.03791/) (2025)
- [MaDiS: Taming Masked Diffusion Language Models for Sign Language Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2601.19577/) (2026)
- [SignSparK: Efficient Multilingual Sign Language Production via Sparse Keyframe Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.10446/) (2026)
- [Studying and Mitigating Biases in Sign Language Understanding Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.05206/) (2024)
- [Toward Phonology-Guided Sign Language Motion Generation: A Diffusion Baseline and Conditioning Analysis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.17388/) (2026)
- [Context-Aware Autoregressive Diffusion for Gloss-Wise Sign Language Production](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2606.21234/) (2026)
- [HandCraft: Dynamic Sign Generation for Synthetic Data Augmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2508.14345/) (2025)
- [InterventionLens: A Multi-Agent Framework for Detecting ASD Intervention Strategies in Parent-Child Shared Reading](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.13710/) (2026)
- [ConfusionBench: An Expert-Validated Benchmark for Confusion Recognition and Localization in Educational Videos](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.17267/) (2026)
- [Conditional Collapse in Sign Language Production: A Diagnostic and a Scaling Argument](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2606.01643/) (2026)
- [SignGPT: Toward LLM-Mediated Sign Language Interaction through Gloss-Free Translation and Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2609.21709/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Achieving expressive 3D motion reconstruction and automatic generation for isolated sign words can be challenging, due to the lack of real-world 3D sign-word data, the complex nuances of signing motions, and the cross-modal understanding of sign language semantics. To address these challenges, we introduce SignAvatar, a framework capable of both word-level sign language reconstruction and generation. SignAvatar employs a transformer-based conditional variational autoencoder architecture, effectively establishing relationships across different semantic modalities. Additionally, this approach incorporates a curriculum learning strategy to enhance the model's robustness and generalization, resulting in more realistic motions. Furthermore, we contribute the ASL3DWord dataset, composed of 3D joint rotation data for the body, hands, and face, for unique sign words. We demonstrate the effectiveness of SignAvatar through extensive experiments, showcasing its superior reconstruction and automatic generation capabilities. The code and dataset are available on the project page.