# AHA! Animating Human Avatars in Diverse Scenes with Gaussian Splatting

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2511.09827 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2511.09827/

## Key facts

- Cited by 4 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 77 of its 108 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 13 Nov 2025.

## Builds on (most cited first, 30 of 77)

- [3D Gaussian Splatting for Real-Time Radiance Field Rendering](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2308.04079/) (2023)
- [Instant Neural Graphics Primitives with a Multiresolution Hash Encoding](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2201.05989/) (2022)
- [DeepSDF: Learning Continuous Signed Distance Functions for Shape Representation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1901.05103/) (2019)
- [Occupancy Networks: Learning 3D Reconstruction in Function Space](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1812.03828/) (2018)
- [Mip-NeRF 360: Unbounded Anti-Aliased Neural Radiance Fields](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2111.12077/) (2021)
- [Expressive Body Capture: 3D Hands, Face, and Body from a Single Image](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1904.05866/) (2019)
- [VGGT: Visual Geometry Grounded Transformer](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.11651/) (2025)
- [AMASS: Archive of Motion Capture as Surface Shapes](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1904.03278/) (2019)
- [4D Gaussian Splatting for Real-Time Dynamic Scene Rendering](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2310.08528/) (2023)
- [Human Motion Diffusion Model](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2209.14916/) (2022)
- [2D Gaussian Splatting for Geometrically Accurate Radiance Fields](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.17888/) (2024)
- [The Replica Dataset: A Digital Replica of Indoor Spaces](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1906.05797/) (2019)
- [End-to-end Recovery of Human Shape and Pose](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1712.06584/) (2017)
- [ScanNet++: A High-Fidelity Dataset of 3D Indoor Scenes](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2308.11417/) (2023)
- [Dynamic 3D Gaussians: Tracking by Persistent Dynamic View Synthesis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2308.09713/) (2023)
- [Keep it SMPL: Automatic Estimation of 3D Human Pose and Shape from a Single Image](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1607.08128/) (2016)
- [Zip-NeRF: Anti-Aliased Grid-Based Neural Radiance Fields](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2304.06706/) (2023)
- [SuGaR: Surface-Aligned Gaussian Splatting for Efficient 3D Mesh Reconstruction and High-Quality Mesh Rendering](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.12775/) (2023)
- [Nerfstudio: A Modular Framework for Neural Radiance Field Development](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2302.04264/) (2023)
- [Neural Fields in Visual Computing and Beyond](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2111.11426/) (2021)
- [DL3DV-10K: A Large-Scale Scene Dataset for Deep Learning-based 3D Vision](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.16256/) (2023)
- [PIFuHD: Multi-Level Pixel-Aligned Implicit Function for High-Resolution 3D Human Digitization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2004.00452/) (2020)
- [HumanNeRF: Free-viewpoint Rendering of Moving People from Monocular Video](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2201.04127/) (2022)
- [GRAB: A Dataset of Whole-Body Human Grasping of Objects](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2008.11200/) (2020)
- [SplaTAM: Splat, Track & Map 3D Gaussians for Dense RGB-D SLAM](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.02126/) (2023)
- [PhysDiff: Physics-Guided Human Motion Diffusion Model](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2212.02500/) (2022)
- [Animatable Neural Radiance Fields for Modeling Dynamic Human Bodies](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2105.02872/) (2021)
- [Spacetime Gaussian Feature Splatting for Real-Time Dynamic View Synthesis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.16812/) (2023)
- [Resolving 3D Human Pose Ambiguities with 3D Scene Constraints](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1908.06963/) (2019)
- [BABEL: Bodies, Action and Behavior with English Labels](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2106.09696/) (2021)

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

- [AHOY! Animatable Humans under Occlusion from YouTube Videos with Gaussian Splatting and Video Diffusion Priors](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.17975/) (2026)
- [Visually-grounded Humanoid Agents](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2604.08509/) (2026)
- [Animated 3DGS Avatars in Diverse Scenes with Consistent Lighting and Shadows](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2601.01660/) (2026)
- [RAGA: Real Time Ray Traced Gaussian Shadow Casting for 3DGS Avatar-Scene Interaction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2606.29329/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

We present a novel framework for animating humans in 3D scenes using 3D Gaussian Splatting (3DGS), a neural scene representation that has recently achieved state-of-the-art photorealistic results for novel-view synthesis but remains under-explored for human-scene animation and interaction. Unlike existing animation pipelines that use meshes or point clouds as the underlying 3D representation, our approach introduces the use of 3DGS as the 3D representation for animating humans in scenes. By representing humans and scenes as Gaussians, our approach allows geometry-consistent free-viewpoint rendering of humans interacting with 3D scenes. Our key insight is that rendering can be decoupled from motion synthesis, and each sub-problem can be addressed independently without the need for paired human-scene data. Central to our method is a Gaussian-aligned motion module that synthesizes motion without explicit scene geometry, using opacity-based cues and projected Gaussian structures to guide human placement and pose alignment. To ensure natural interactions, we further propose a human-scene Gaussian refinement optimization that enforces realistic contact and navigation. We evaluate our approach on scenes from Scannet++ and the SuperSplat library, and on avatars reconstructed from sparse and dense multi-view human capture. Finally, we demonstrate that our framework enables novel applications such as geometry-consistent free-viewpoint rendering of edited monocular RGB videos with newly animated humans, showcasing the unique advantages of 3DGS for monocular video-based human animation. To assess the full quality of our results, we encourage readers to view the supplementary material available at https://miraymen.github.io/aha/ .