# NoPo-Avatar: Generalizable and Animatable Avatars from Sparse Inputs without Human Poses

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2511.16673 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2511.16673/

## Key facts

- No citing papers in the map yet (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 31 of its 38 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 20 Nov 2025.

## Builds on (most cited first, 30 of 31)

- [Segment Anything](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2304.02643/) (2023)
- [Vision Transformers for Dense Prediction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.13413/) (2021)
- [Expressive Body Capture: 3D Hands, Face, and Body from a Single Image](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1904.05866/) (2019)
- [DUSt3R: Geometric 3D Vision Made Easy](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.14132/) (2023)
- [Splatter Image: Ultra-Fast Single-View 3D Reconstruction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.13150/) (2023)
- [No Pose, No Problem: Surprisingly Simple 3D Gaussian Splats from Sparse Unposed Images](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.24207/) (2024)
- [Function4D: Real-time Human Volumetric Capture from Very Sparse Consumer RGBD Sensors](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2105.01859/) (2021)
- [3DGS-Avatar: Animatable Avatars via Deformable 3D Gaussian Splatting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.09228/) (2023)
- [GPS-Gaussian: Generalizable Pixel-wise 3D Gaussian Splatting for Real-time Human Novel View Synthesis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.02155/) (2023)
- [Neural Human Performer: Learning Generalizable Radiance Fields for Human Performance Rendering](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2109.07448/) (2021)
- [MV-DUSt3R+: Single-Stage Scene Reconstruction from Sparse Views In 2 Seconds](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2412.06974/) (2024)
- [Multi-HMR: Multi-Person Whole-Body Human Mesh Recovery in a Single Shot](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2402.14654/) (2024)
- [SHERF: Generalizable Human NeRF from a Single Image](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.12791/) (2023)
- [X-Avatar: Expressive Human Avatars](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.04805/) (2023)
- [LHM: Large Animatable Human Reconstruction Model from a Single Image in Seconds](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.10625/) (2025)
- [IDOL: Instant Photorealistic 3D Human Creation from a Single Image](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2412.14963/) (2024)
- [HumanSplat: Generalizable Single-Image Human Gaussian Splatting with Structure Priors](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.12459/) (2024)
- [GoMAvatar: Efficient Animatable Human Modeling from Monocular Video Using Gaussians-on-Mesh](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.07991/) (2024)
- [Human-3Diffusion: Realistic Avatar Creation via Explicit 3D Consistent Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.08475/) (2024)
- [Generalizable Human Gaussians for Sparse View Synthesis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.12777/) (2024)
- [Generalizable Human Gaussians from Single-View Image](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.06050/) (2024)
- [PreF3R: Pose-Free Feed-Forward 3D Gaussian Splatting from Variable-length Image Sequence](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2411.16877/) (2024)
- [Neural Image-based Avatars: Generalizable Radiance Fields for Human Avatar Modeling](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2304.04897/) (2023)
- [iHuman: Instant Animatable Digital Humans From Monocular Videos](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.11174/) (2024)
- [Instant 3D Human Avatar Generation using Image Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.07516/) (2024)
- [HumanDreamer-X: Photorealistic Single-image Human Avatars Reconstruction via Gaussian Restoration](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2504.03536/) (2025)
- [RoGSplat: Learning Robust Generalizable Human Gaussian Splatting from Sparse Multi-View Images](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.14198/) (2025)
- [SIGMAN:Scaling 3D Human Gaussian Generation with Millions of Assets](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2504.06982/) (2025)
- [LIFe-GoM: Generalizable Human Rendering with Learned Iterative Feedback Over Multi-Resolution Gaussians-on-Mesh](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2502.09617/) (2025)
- [HumanGif: Single-View Human Diffusion with Generative Prior](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2502.12080/) (2025)

## Abstract (arXiv)

We tackle the task of recovering an animatable 3D human avatar from a single or a sparse set of images. For this task, beyond a set of images, many prior state-of-the-art methods use accurate "ground-truth" camera poses and human poses as input to guide reconstruction at test-time. We show that pose-dependent reconstruction degrades results significantly if pose estimates are noisy. To overcome this, we introduce NoPo-Avatar, which reconstructs avatars solely from images, without any pose input. By removing the dependence of test-time reconstruction on human poses, NoPo-Avatar is not affected by noisy human pose estimates, making it more widely applicable. Experiments on challenging THuman2.0, XHuman, and HuGe100K data show that NoPo-Avatar outperforms existing baselines in practical settings (without ground-truth poses) and delivers comparable results in lab settings (with ground-truth poses).