# Particulate: Feed-Forward 3D Object Articulation

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2512.11798 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2512.11798/

## Key facts

- Cited by 23 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 65 of its 70 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 12 Dec 2025.

## Builds on (most cited first, 30 of 65)

- [Attention Is All You Need](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1706.03762/) (2017)
- [Denoising Diffusion Probabilistic Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2006.11239/) (2020)
- [Segment Anything](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2304.02643/) (2023)
- [End-to-End Object Detection with Transformers](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2005.12872/) (2020)
- [3D Gaussian Splatting for Real-Time Radiance Field Rendering](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2308.04079/) (2023)
- [LAION-5B: An open large-scale dataset for training next generation image-text models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2210.08402/) (2022)
- [Dynamic Graph CNN for Learning on Point Clouds](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1801.07829/) (2018)
- [Objaverse: A Universe of Annotated 3D Objects](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2212.08051/) (2022)
- [Generalized Intersection over Union: A Metric and A Loss for Bounding Box Regression](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1902.09630/) (2019)
- [Grounded Language-Image Pre-training](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2112.03857/) (2021)
- [Objaverse-XL: A Universe of 10M+ 3D Objects](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2307.05663/) (2023)
- [Structured 3D Latents for Scalable and Versatile 3D Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2412.01506/) (2024)
- [SAPIEN: A SimulAted Part-based Interactive ENvironment](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2003.08515/) (2020)
- [3DShape2VecSet: A 3D Shape Representation for Neural Fields and Generative Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2301.11445/) (2023)
- [Hunyuan3D 2.0: Scaling Diffusion Models for High Resolution Textured 3D Assets Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2501.12202/) (2025)
- [Relation-Shape Convolutional Neural Network for Point Cloud Analysis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1904.07601/) (2019)
- [Hunyuan3D 2.1: From Images to High-Fidelity 3D Assets with Production-Ready PBR Material](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2506.15442/) (2025)
- [Ditto: Building Digital Twins of Articulated Objects from Interaction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2202.08227/) (2022)
- [iGibson 1.0: a Simulation Environment for Interactive Tasks in Large Realistic Scenes](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2012.02924/) (2020)
- [BEHAVIOR-1K: A Human-Centered, Embodied AI Benchmark with 1,000 Everyday Activities and Realistic Simulation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.09227/) (2024)
- [GAPartNet: Cross-Category Domain-Generalizable Object Perception and Manipulation via Generalizable and Actionable Parts](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2211.05272/) (2022)
- [D2NeRF: Self-Supervised Decoupling of Dynamic and Static Objects from a Monocular Video](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2205.15838/) (2022)
- [Infinigen Indoors: Photorealistic Indoor Scenes using Procedural Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.11824/) (2024)
- [Cameras as Rays: Pose Estimation via Ray Diffusion](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2402.14817/) (2024)
- [PartSLIP: Low-Shot Part Segmentation for 3D Point Clouds via Pretrained Image-Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2212.01558/) (2022)
- [PARIS: Part-level Reconstruction and Motion Analysis for Articulated Objects](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2308.07391/) (2023)
- [A-SDF: Learning Disentangled Signed Distance Functions for Articulated Shape Representation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2104.07645/) (2021)
- [MagicPony: Learning Articulated 3D Animals in the Wild](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2211.12497/) (2022)
- [Dora: Sampling and Benchmarking for 3D Shape Variational Auto-Encoders](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2412.17808/) (2024)
- [SAMPart3D: Segment Any Part in 3D Objects](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2411.07184/) (2024)

## Built on by (most cited first, 23 of 23)

- [Articraft: An Agentic System for Scalable Articulated 3D Asset Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2605.15187/) (2026)
- [SIMART: Decomposing Monolithic Meshes into Sim-ready Articulated Assets via MLLM](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.23386/) (2026)
- [Instruct-Particulate: Scaling Feed-Forward 3D Object Articulation with Kinematic Control](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2606.14699/) (2026)
- [AniGen: Unified S3 Fields for Animatable 3D Asset Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2604.08746/) (2026)
- [ViPS: Video-informed Pose Spaces for Auto-Rigged Meshes](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2604.17623/) (2026)
- [UniPhysGen: Unified Physical Grounding for Simulation-Ready 3D Assets](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2607.13586/) (2026)
- [3D Generation for Embodied AI and Robotic Simulation: A Survey](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2604.26509/) (2026)
- [Artic-O: End-to-End Articulated Object Reconstruction via Latent Geometry Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2606.21938/) (2026)
- [UnfoldArt: Zero-Shot Recovery of Full Articulated 3D Objects from Text or Image](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2606.30608/) (2026)
- [PhysX-CoT: Structured Physical Reasoning from a Single Image to Simulation-Ready 3D Assets](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2608.08053/) (2026)
- [Visual General Intelligence: A White Paper](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2608.25924/) (2026)
- [AgentSTAR: Agentic Shape Tracking and Reconstruction from Monocular Videos](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2609.24487/) (2026)
- [Lookalike3D: Seeing Double in 3D](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.24713/) (2026)
- [Rigel3D: Rig-aware Latents for Animation-Ready 3D Asset Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2605.13129/) (2026)
- [Functionalization via Structure Completion and Motion Rectification](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2605.18010/) (2026)
- [ArtiMo: Agent-Driven Articulated Mesh Animation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2608.20699/) (2026)
- [FunArt: Decoding Functional Structure and Articulation from Generative 3D Latents](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2609.20673/) (2026)
- [FAMOS: Feed-Forward 3D Articulation Modeling from Sparse Observations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2609.20817/) (2026)
- [Track2Art: Articulated Object Model Recovery with Visual-Geometric Track Representations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2609.27675/) (2026)
- [ArticulateArena: A Metric for Articulated Kinematics](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2609.33931/) (2026)
- [ArticuTable: Generating Instance-Level Interactive Rigid-Articulated 3D Tabletop Scenes from a Single Image](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2610.05249/) (2026)
- [Towards Physically Grounded Articulated 3D Assets: A Multi-Agent Pipeline and Benchmark](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2610.13947/) (2026)
- [ViewStruct: View-Grounded Articulation and Connectivity Inference](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2610.16793/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

We introduce Particulate, a feed-forward model that, given a 3D mesh of an object, infers its articulations, including its 3D parts, their kinematic structure, and the motion constraints. The model is based on a transformer network, the Part Articulation Transformer, which predicts all these parameters for all joints. We train the network end-to-end on a diverse collection of articulated 3D assets from public datasets. During inference, Particulate maps the output of the network back to the input mesh, yielding a fully articulated 3D model in seconds, much faster than prior approaches that require per-object optimization. Particulate also works on AI-generated 3D assets, enabling the generation of articulated 3D objects from a single (real or synthetic) image when combined with an off-the-shelf image-to-3D model. We further introduce a new challenging benchmark for 3D articulation estimation curated from high-quality public 3D assets, and redesign the evaluation protocol to be more consistent with human preferences. Empirically, Particulate significantly outperforms state-of-the-art approaches.