# Half-Physics: Enabling Kinematic 3D Human Model with Physical Interactions

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2507.23778 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2507.23778/

## Key facts

- Cited by 4 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 44 of its 58 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 31 Jul 2025.

## Builds on (most cited first, 30 of 44)

- [Expressive Body Capture: 3D Hands, Face, and Body from a Single Image](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1904.05866/) (2019)
- [AMASS: Archive of Motion Capture as Surface Shapes](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1904.03278/) (2019)
- [Habitat: A Platform for Embodied AI Research](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1904.01201/) (2019)
- [End-to-end Recovery of Human Shape and Pose](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1712.06584/) (2017)
- [Keep it SMPL: Automatic Estimation of 3D Human Pose and Shape from a Single Image](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1607.08128/) (2016)
- [VIBE: Video Inference for Human Body Pose and Shape Estimation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1912.05656/) (2019)
- [Habitat 2.0: Training Home Assistants to Rearrange their Habitat](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2106.14405/) (2021)
- [AI Choreographer: Music Conditioned 3D Dance Generation with AIST++](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2101.08779/) (2021)
- [GRAB: A Dataset of Whole-Body Human Grasping of Objects](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2008.11200/) (2020)
- [Resolving 3D Human Pose Ambiguities with 3D Scene Constraints](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1908.06963/) (2019)
- [ICON: Implicit Clothed humans Obtained from Normals](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2112.09127/) (2021)
- [Diffusion-based Generation, Optimization, and Planning in 3D Scenes](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2301.06015/) (2023)
- [Habitat 3.0: A Co-Habitat for Humans, Avatars and Robots](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2310.13724/) (2023)
- [Perpetual Humanoid Control for Real-time Simulated Avatars](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.06456/) (2023)
- [Bailando: 3D Dance Generation by Actor-Critic GPT with Choreographic Memory](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2203.13055/) (2022)
- [Object Motion Guided Human Motion Synthesis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2309.16237/) (2023)
- [Stochastic Scene-Aware Motion Prediction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2108.08284/) (2021)
- [ECON: Explicit Clothed humans Optimized via Normal integration](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2212.07422/) (2022)
- [InterDiff: Generating 3D Human-Object Interactions with Physics-Informed Diffusion](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2308.16905/) (2023)
- [Scaling Up Dynamic Human-Scene Interaction Modeling](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.08629/) (2024)
- [Synthesizing Long-Term 3D Human Motion and Interaction in 3D Scenes](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2012.05522/) (2020)
- [Universal Humanoid Motion Representations for Physics-Based Control](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2310.04582/) (2023)
- [Synthesizing Diverse Human Motions in 3D Indoor Scenes](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.12411/) (2023)
- [Controllable Human-Object Interaction Synthesis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.03913/) (2023)
- [CLoSD: Closing the Loop between Simulation and Diffusion for multi-task character control](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.03441/) (2024)
- [Unified Human-Scene Interaction via Prompted Chain-of-Contacts](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2309.07918/) (2023)
- [Towards Diverse and Natural Scene-aware 3D Human Motion Synthesis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2205.13001/) (2022)
- [CIRCLE: Capture In Rich Contextual Environments](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.17912/) (2023)
- [PhysHOI: Physics-Based Imitation of Dynamic Human-Object Interaction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.04393/) (2023)
- [ChatPose: Chatting about 3D Human Pose](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.18836/) (2023)

## Built on by (most cited first, 4 of 4)

- [Advances in 4D Representation: Geometry, Motion, and Interaction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2510.19255/) (2025)
- [HSImul3R: Physics-in-the-Loop Reconstruction of Simulation-Ready Human-Scene Interactions](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.15612/) (2026)
- [HumanCLAW: Can Vision-Language Models Act Through a Body?](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2607.27180/) (2026)
- [PIAvatar: Physically Interactive Avatars via Deformation Gradient Decoupling](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2606.21162/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

While current general-purpose 3D human models (e.g., SMPL-X) efficiently represent accurate human shape and pose, they lacks the ability to physically interact with the environment due to the kinematic nature. As a result, kinematic-based interaction models often suffer from issues such as interpenetration and unrealistic object dynamics. To address this limitation, we introduce a novel approach that embeds SMPL-X into a tangible entity capable of dynamic physical interactions with its surroundings. Specifically, we propose a "half-physics" mechanism that transforms 3D kinematic motion into a physics simulation. Our approach maintains kinematic control over inherent SMPL-X poses while ensuring physically plausible interactions with scenes and objects, effectively eliminating penetration and unrealistic object dynamics. Unlike reinforcement learning-based methods, which demand extensive and complex training, our half-physics method is learning-free and generalizes to any body shape and motion; meanwhile, it operates in real time. Moreover, it preserves the fidelity of the original kinematic motion while seamlessly integrating physical interactions