# Learning High-Fidelity Cloth Animation via Skinning-Free Image Transfer

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2512.05593 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2512.05593/

## Key facts

- No citing papers in the map yet (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 36 of its 50 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 5 Dec 2025.

## Builds on (most cited first, 30 of 36)

- [Attention Is All You Need](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1706.03762/) (2017)
- [Deep Residual Learning for Image Recognition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1512.03385/) (2015)
- [An Image is Worth 16x16 Words: Transformers for Image Recognition at Scale](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2010.11929/) (2020)
- [DINOv2: Learning Robust Visual Features without Supervision](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2304.07193/) (2023)
- [Emerging Properties in Self-Supervised Vision Transformers](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2104.14294/) (2021)
- [On the Spectral Bias of Neural Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1806.08734/) (2018)
- [DensePose: Dense Human Pose Estimation In The Wild](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1802.00434/) (2018)
- [Modular Primitives for High-Performance Differentiable Rendering](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2011.03277/) (2020)
- [Deep ViT Features as Dense Visual Descriptors](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2112.05814/) (2021)
- [ICON: Implicit Clothed humans Obtained from Normals](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2112.09127/) (2021)
- [ECON: Explicit Clothed humans Optimized via Normal integration](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2212.07422/) (2022)
- [TailorNet: Predicting Clothing in 3D as a Function of Human Pose, Shape and Garment Style](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2003.04583/) (2020)
- [Pixel Codec Avatars](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2104.04638/) (2021)
- [CLOTH3D: Clothed 3D Humans](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1912.02792/) (2019)
- [DeepWrinkles: Accurate and Realistic Clothing Modeling](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1808.03417/) (2018)
- [Learning-Based Animation of Clothing for Virtual Try-On](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1903.07190/) (2019)
- [SNUG: Self-Supervised Neural Dynamic Garments](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2204.02219/) (2022)
- [Self-Supervised Collision Handling via Generative 3D Garment Models for Virtual Try-On](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2105.06462/) (2021)
- [HOOD: Hierarchical Graphs for Generalized Modelling of Clothing Dynamics](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2212.07242/) (2022)
- [DiffCloth: Differentiable Cloth Simulation with Dry Frictional Contact](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2106.05306/) (2021)
- [PBNS: Physically Based Neural Simulator for Unsupervised Garment Pose Space Deformation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2012.11310/) (2020)
- [DiffAvatar: Simulation-Ready Garment Optimization with Differentiable Simulation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.12194/) (2023)
- [Predicting Loose-Fitting Garment Deformations Using Bone-Driven Motion Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2205.01355/) (2022)
- [Parameter is Not All You Need: Starting from Non-Parametric Networks for 3D Point Cloud Analysis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.08134/) (2023)
- [Neural Point-based Shape Modeling of Humans in Challenging Clothing](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2209.06814/) (2022)
- [Deep Detail Enhancement for Any Garment](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2008.04367/) (2020)
- [Computational Pattern Making from 3D Garment Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2202.10272/) (2022)
- [Interacting Hand-Object Pose Estimation via Dense Mutual Attention](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2211.08805/) (2022)
- [Motion Guided Deep Dynamic 3D Garments](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2209.11449/) (2022)
- [GAPS: Geometry-Aware, Physics-Based, Self-Supervised Neural Garment Draping](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.01490/) (2023)

## Abstract (arXiv)

We present a novel method for generating 3D garment deformations from given body poses, which is key to a wide range of applications, including virtual try-on and extended reality. To simplify the cloth dynamics, existing methods mostly rely on linear blend skinning to obtain low-frequency posed garment shape and only regress high-frequency wrinkles. However, due to the lack of explicit skinning supervision, such skinning-based approach often produces misaligned shapes when posing the garment, consequently corrupts the high-frequency signals and fails to recover high-fidelity wrinkles. To tackle this issue, we propose a skinning-free approach by independently estimating posed (i) vertex position for low-frequency posed garment shape, and (ii) vertex normal for high-frequency local wrinkle details. In this way, each frequency modality can be effectively decoupled and directly supervised by the geometry of the deformed garment. To further improve the visual quality of animation, we propose to encode both vertex attributes as rendered texture images, so that 3D garment deformation can be equivalently achieved via 2D image transfer. This enables us to leverage powerful pretrained image models to recover fine-grained visual details in wrinkles, while maintaining superior scalability for garments of diverse topologies without relying on manual UV partition. Finally, we propose a multimodal fusion to incorporate constraints from both frequency modalities and robustly recover deformed 3D garments from transferred images. Extensive experiments show that our method significantly improves animation quality on various garment types and recovers finer wrinkles than state-of-the-art methods.