# Im2Haircut: Single-view Strand-based Hair Reconstruction for Human Avatars

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.01469 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2509.01469/

## Key facts

- Cited by 9 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 22 of its 47 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 1 Sep 2025.

## Builds on (most cited first, 22 of 22)

- [An Image is Worth 16x16 Words: Transformers for Image Recognition at Scale](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2010.11929/) (2020)
- [Segment Anything](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2304.02643/) (2023)
- [3D Gaussian Splatting for Real-Time Radiance Field Rendering](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2308.04079/) (2023)
- [Accurate 3D Face Reconstruction with Weakly-Supervised Learning: From Single Image to Image Set](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1903.08527/) (2019)
- [Depth Pro: Sharp Monocular Metric Depth in Less Than a Second](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.02073/) (2024)
- [MAT: Mask-Aware Transformer for Large Hole Image Inpainting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2203.15270/) (2022)
- [H3D-Net: Few-Shot High-Fidelity 3D Head Reconstruction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2107.12512/) (2021)
- [GaussianHair: Hair Modeling and Rendering with Light-aware Gaussians](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2402.10483/) (2024)
- [Neural Haircut: Prior-Guided Strand-Based Hair Reconstruction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2306.05872/) (2023)
- [Neural Strands: Learning Hair Geometry and Appearance from Multi-View Images](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2207.14067/) (2022)
- [HairStep: Transfer Synthetic to Real Using Strand and Depth Maps for Single-View 3D Hair Modeling](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.02700/) (2023)
- [Human Hair Reconstruction with Strand-Aligned 3D Gaussians](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2409.14778/) (2024)
- [HAAR: Text-Conditioned Generative Model of 3D Strand-based Human Hairstyles](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.11666/) (2023)
- [GroomGen: A High-Quality Generative Hair Model Using Hierarchical Latent Representations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.02062/) (2023)
- [MonoHair: High-Fidelity Hair Modeling from a Monocular Video](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.18356/) (2024)
- [Perm: A Parametric Representation for Multi-Style 3D Hair Modeling](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.19451/) (2024)
- [GroomCap: High-Fidelity Prior-Free Hair Capture](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2409.00831/) (2024)
- [DiffLocks: Generating 3D Hair from a Single Image using Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.06166/) (2025)
- [Dr.Hair: Reconstructing Scalp-Connected Hair Strands without Pre-training via Differentiable Rendering of Line Segments](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.17496/) (2024)
- [Hair-GANs: Recovering 3D Hair Structure from a Single Image](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1811.06229/) (2018)
- [Hairmony: Fairness-aware hairstyle classification](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.11528/) (2024)
- [TANGLED: Generating 3D Hair Strands from Images with Arbitrary Styles and Viewpoints](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2502.06392/) (2025)

## Built on by (most cited first, 9 of 9)

- [NeuralFur: Animal Fur Reconstruction From Multi-View Images](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2601.12481/) (2026)
- [PhysHead: Simulation-Ready Gaussian Head Avatars](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2604.06467/) (2026)
- [HairOrbit: Multi-view Aware 3D Hair Modeling from Single Portraits](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2604.02867/) (2026)
- [CGHair: Compact Gaussian Hair Reconstruction with Card Clustering](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2604.03716/) (2026)
- [HairLRM: Strand-based Hair Modeling via Large Reconstruction Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2606.15238/) (2026)
- [One-shot Compositional 3D Head Avatars with Deformable Hair](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2604.14782/) (2026)
- [Wispy to Voluminous: Prior-free Multi-view Capture of Strand-level Facial Hair](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2606.08041/) (2026)
- [Head Avatars with Dynamic Explicit Hair](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2607.23861/) (2026)
- [HairFlow: Modeling 3D Hair Strands with Multi-Modal Conditioned Diffusion](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2610.17348/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

We present a novel approach for 3D hair reconstruction from single photographs based on a global hair prior combined with local optimization. Capturing strand-based hair geometry from single photographs is challenging due to the variety and geometric complexity of hairstyles and the lack of ground truth training data. Classical reconstruction methods like multi-view stereo only reconstruct the visible hair strands, missing the inner structure of hairstyles and hampering realistic hair simulation. To address this, existing methods leverage hairstyle priors trained on synthetic data. Such data, however, is limited in both quantity and quality since it requires manual work from skilled artists to model the 3D hairstyles and create near-photorealistic renderings. To address this, we propose a novel approach that uses both, real and synthetic data to learn an effective hairstyle prior. Specifically, we train a transformer-based prior model on synthetic data to obtain knowledge of the internal hairstyle geometry and introduce real data in the learning process to model the outer structure. This training scheme is able to model the visible hair strands depicted in an input image, while preserving the general 3D structure of hairstyles. We exploit this prior to create a Gaussian-splatting-based reconstruction method that creates hairstyles from one or more images. Qualitative and quantitative comparisons with existing reconstruction pipelines demonstrate the effectiveness and superior performance of our method for capturing detailed hair orientation, overall silhouette, and backside consistency. For additional results and code, please refer to https://im2haircut.is.tue.mpg.de.