# SAM 3D Body: Robust Full-Body Human Mesh Recovery

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2602.15989 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2602.15989/

## Key facts

- Cited by 69 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 44 of its 58 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 17 Feb 2026.

## Builds on (most cited first, 30 of 44)

- [Microsoft COCO: Common Objects in Context](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1405.0312/) (2014)
- [Segment Anything](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2304.02643/) (2023)
- [SAM 2: Segment Anything in Images and Videos](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2408.00714/) (2024)
- [Expressive Body Capture: 3D Hands, Face, and Body from a Single Image](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1904.05866/) (2019)
- [DINOv3](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2508.10104/) (2025)
- [End-to-end Recovery of Human Shape and Pose](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1712.06584/) (2017)
- [Learning to Reconstruct 3D Human Pose and Shape via Model-fitting in the Loop](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1909.12828/) (2019)
- [Ego-Exo4D: Understanding Skilled Human Activity from First- and Third-Person Perspectives](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.18259/) (2023)
- [End-to-End Human Pose and Mesh Reconstruction with Transformers](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2012.09760/) (2020)
- [A simple yet effective baseline for 3d human pose estimation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1705.03098/) (2017)
- [Humans in 4D: Reconstructing and Tracking Humans with Transformers](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.20091/) (2023)
- [DexYCB: A Benchmark for Capturing Hand Grasping of Objects](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2104.04631/) (2021)
- [HybrIK: A Hybrid Analytical-Neural Inverse Kinematics Solution for 3D Human Pose and Shape Estimation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2011.14672/) (2020)
- [Reconstructing Hands in 3D with Transformers](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.05251/) (2023)
- [FreiHAND: A Dataset for Markerless Capture of Hand Pose and Shape from Single RGB Images](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1909.04349/) (2019)
- [MoGe-2: Accurate Monocular Geometry with Metric Scale and Sharp Details](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2507.02546/) (2025)
- [InterHand2.6M: A Dataset and Baseline for 3D Interacting Hand Pose Estimation from a Single RGB Image](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2008.09309/) (2020)
- [CLIFF: Carrying Location Information in Full Frames into Human Pose and Shape Estimation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2208.00571/) (2022)
- [WHAM: Reconstructing World-grounded Humans with Accurate 3D Motion](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.07531/) (2023)
- [Panoptic Studio: A Massively Multiview System for Social Interaction Capture](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1612.03153/) (2016)
- [FrankMocap: A Monocular 3D Whole-Body Pose Estimation System via Regression and Integration](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2108.06428/) (2021)
- [Reviving Iterative Training with Mask Guidance for Interactive Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2102.06583/) (2021)
- [Monocular Expressive Body Regression through Body-Driven Attention](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2008.09062/) (2020)
- [SMPLer-X: Scaling Up Expressive Human Pose and Shape Estimation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2309.17448/) (2023)
- [One-Stage 3D Whole-Body Mesh Recovery with Component Aware Transformer](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.16160/) (2023)
- [WiLoR: End-to-end 3D Hand Localization and Reconstruction in-the-wild](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2409.12259/) (2024)
- [TRAM: Global Trajectory and Motion of 3D Humans from in-the-wild Videos](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.17346/) (2024)
- [Multi-HMR: Multi-Person Whole-Body Human Mesh Recovery in a Single Shot](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2402.14654/) (2024)
- [TokenHMR: Advancing Human Mesh Recovery with a Tokenized Pose Representation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.16752/) (2024)
- [Hi4D: 4D Instance Segmentation of Close Human Interaction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.15380/) (2023)

## Built on by (most cited first, 30 of 69)

- [SCAIL-2: Unifying Controlled Character Animation with End-to-End In-Context Conditioning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2606.10804/) (2026)
- [DuoMo: Dual Motion Diffusion for World-Space Human Reconstruction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.03265/) (2026)
- [SOMA: Unifying Parametric Human Body Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.16858/) (2026)
- [One Sentence, One Drama: Personalized Short-Form Drama Generation via Multi-Agent Systems](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2605.22144/) (2026)
- [ActiveMimic: Egocentric Video Pretraining with Active Perception](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2606.06194/) (2026)
- [Robot Learning from Human Videos: A Survey](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2604.27621/) (2026)
- [Monocular Biomechanical Tracking of Fingers with Inverse Kinematics to Foundation Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2605.09258/) (2026)
- [Fast SAM 3D Body: Accelerating SAM 3D Body for Real-Time Full-Body Human Mesh Recovery](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.15603/) (2026)
- [CoInteract: Physically-Consistent Human-Object Interaction Video Synthesis via Spatially-Structured Co-Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2604.19636/) (2026)
- [EgoExo-WM: Unlocking Exo Video for Ego World Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2605.15477/) (2026)
- [SUGAR: A Scalable Human-Video-Driven Generalizable Humanoid Loco-Manipulation Learning Framework](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2605.20373/) (2026)
- [World Narrative Model for Highly Controllable Video Generation: A Paradigm Shift from Pixel Sampling to Physical World Orchestration](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2606.31946/) (2026)
- [ACE-Data-0: Human-Centric Ambient Capture as Embodied Data Engine](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2607.28625/) (2026)
- [DressWild: Feed-Forward Pose-Agnostic Garment Sewing Pattern Generation from In-the-Wild Images](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2602.16502/) (2026)
- [Can Vision Language Models Judge Action Quality? An Empirical Evaluation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2604.08294/) (2026)
- [Asset Harvester: Extracting 3D Assets from Autonomous Driving Logs for Simulation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2604.18468/) (2026)
- [Scene and Human in One World: Reconstruction in a Feedforward Pass](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2606.27720/) (2026)
- [Better Rigs, Not Bigger Networks: A Body Model Ablation for Gaussian Avatars](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2604.01447/) (2026)
- [TAIHRI: Task-Aware 3D Human Keypoints Localization for Close-Range Human-Robot Interaction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2604.08921/) (2026)
- [Markerless Motion Capture for Biomechanical Whole-Body Kinematic Estimation in Infants](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2605.17120/) (2026)
- [PRIMA: Boosting Animal Mesh Recovery with Biological Priors and Test-Time Adaptation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2606.02366/) (2026)
- [Go-with-the-Track: Video Compositing and Motion Control with Point Tracking](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2606.20891/) (2026)
- [MHRGait: Gait Recognition from Momentum Human Rig Pose](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2607.29083/) (2026)
- [4DAnyone: Create Anyone in 4D from a Casual Monocular Video](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2608.20335/) (2026)
- [Biomechanical 3D Body: Self-Supervised Distillation of Biomechanical Pose from a 3D Body Foundation Model](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2608.29928/) (2026)
- [Puppeteer: Object-Grounded Posture-Aware Co-Speech Gesture Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2609.00369/) (2026)
- [Towards Automated Initial Probe Placement in Transthoracic Teleultrasound Using Human Mesh and Skeleton Recovery](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.11257/) (2026)
- [Patient4D: Temporally Consistent Patient Body Mesh Recovery from Monocular Operating Room Video](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.17178/) (2026)
- [Enhancing Box and Block Test with Computer Vision for Post-Stroke Upper Extremity Motor Evaluation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.29101/) (2026)
- [RoSHI: A Versatile Robot-oriented Suit for Human Data In-the-Wild](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2604.07331/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

We introduce SAM 3D Body (3DB), a promptable model for single-image full-body 3D human mesh recovery (HMR) that demonstrates state-of-the-art performance, with strong generalization and consistent accuracy in diverse in-the-wild conditions. 3DB estimates the human pose of the body, feet, and hands. It is the first model to use a new parametric mesh representation, Momentum Human Rig (MHR), which decouples skeletal structure and surface shape. 3DB employs an encoder-decoder architecture and supports auxiliary prompts, including 2D keypoints and masks, enabling user-guided inference similar to the SAM family of models. We derive high-quality annotations from a multi-stage annotation pipeline that uses various combinations of manual keypoint annotation, differentiable optimization, multi-view geometry, and dense keypoint detection. Our data engine efficiently selects and processes data to ensure data diversity, collecting unusual poses and rare imaging conditions. We present a new evaluation dataset organized by pose and appearance categories, enabling nuanced analysis of model behavior. Our experiments demonstrate superior generalization and substantial improvements over prior methods in both qualitative user preference studies and traditional quantitative analysis. Both 3DB and MHR are open-source.