# FoundHand: Large-Scale Domain-Specific Learning for Controllable Hand Image Generation

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2412.02690 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2412.02690/

## Key facts

- Cited by 8 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 92 of its 109 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 3 Dec 2024.

## Builds on (most cited first, 30 of 92)

- [BERT: Pre-training of Deep Bidirectional Transformers for Language Understanding](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1810.04805/) (2018)
- [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)
- [High-Resolution Image Synthesis with Latent Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2112.10752/) (2021)
- [Microsoft COCO: Common Objects in Context](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1405.0312/) (2014)
- [Denoising Diffusion Implicit Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2010.02502/) (2020)
- [Score-Based Generative Modeling through Stochastic Differential Equations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2011.13456/) (2020)
- [Diffusion Models Beat GANs on Image Synthesis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2105.05233/) (2021)
- [Segment Anything](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2304.02643/) (2023)
- [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)
- [3D Gaussian Splatting for Real-Time Radiance Field Rendering](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2308.04079/) (2023)
- [Scalable Diffusion Models with Transformers](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2212.09748/) (2022)
- [A Style-Based Generator Architecture for Generative Adversarial Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1812.04948/) (2018)
- [Adding Conditional Control to Text-to-Image Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2302.05543/) (2023)
- [Zero-Shot Text-to-Image Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2102.12092/) (2021)
- [LAION-5B: An open large-scale dataset for training next generation image-text models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2210.08402/) (2022)
- [Improved Denoising Diffusion Probabilistic Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2102.09672/) (2021)
- [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)
- [CogVideoX: Text-to-Video Diffusion Models with An Expert Transformer](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2408.06072/) (2024)
- [Ego4D: Around the World in 3,000 Hours of Egocentric Video](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2110.07058/) (2021)
- [Zero-1-to-3: Zero-shot One Image to 3D Object](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.11328/) (2023)
- [RePaint: Inpainting using Denoising Diffusion Probabilistic Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2201.09865/) (2022)
- [Efficient Geometry-aware 3D Generative Adversarial Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2112.07945/) (2021)
- [OpenPose: Realtime Multi-Person 2D Pose Estimation using Part Affinity Fields](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1812.08008/) (2018)
- [Representation Alignment for Generation: Training Diffusion Transformers Is Easier Than You Think](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.06940/) (2024)
- [Animate Anyone: Consistent and Controllable Image-to-Video Synthesis for Character Animation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.17117/) (2023)
- [Movie Gen: A Cast of Media Foundation Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.13720/) (2024)

## Built on by (most cited first, 8 of 8)

- [GenHSI: Controllable Generation of Human-Scene Interaction Videos](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2506.19840/) (2025)
- [Glove2Hand: Synthesizing Natural Hand-Object Interaction from Multi-Modal Sensing Gloves](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.20850/) (2026)
- [PAM: A Pose-Appearance-Motion Engine for Sim-to-Real HOI Video Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.22193/) (2026)
- [EclipseTouch: Touch Segmentation on Ad Hoc Surfaces using Worn Infrared Shadow Casting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2509.03430/) (2025)
- [WildGHand: Learning Anti-Perturbation Gaussian Hand Avatars from Monocular In-the-Wild Videos](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2602.20556/) (2026)
- [SesaHand: Enhancing 3D Hand Reconstruction via Controllable Generation with Semantic and Structural Alignment](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.00443/) (2026)
- [DexSIM: Real-time Dexterous Simulation with Unified Causal Video Diffusion](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2605.24630/) (2026)
- [Mudragen: Geometrically Supervised Generation of Interacting Two-Hand Mudras for Preserving Indian Classical Dance Heritage](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2609.03415/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Despite remarkable progress in image generation models, generating realistic hands remains a persistent challenge due to their complex articulation, varying viewpoints, and frequent occlusions. We present FoundHand, a large-scale domain-specific diffusion model for synthesizing single and dual hand images. To train our model, we introduce FoundHand-10M, a large-scale hand dataset with 2D keypoints and segmentation mask annotations. Our insight is to use 2D hand keypoints as a universal representation that encodes both hand articulation and camera viewpoint. FoundHand learns from image pairs to capture physically plausible hand articulations, natively enables precise control through 2D keypoints, and supports appearance control. Our model exhibits core capabilities that include the ability to repose hands, transfer hand appearance, and even synthesize novel views. This leads to zero-shot capabilities for fixing malformed hands in previously generated images, or synthesizing hand video sequences. We present extensive experiments and evaluations that demonstrate state-of-the-art performance of our method.
