SMPL: A Skinned Multi-Person Linear Model

2015

Article

ps

We present a learned model of human body shape and pose-dependent shape variation that is more accurate than previous models and is compatible with existing graphics pipelines. Our Skinned Multi-Person Linear model (SMPL) is a skinned vertex-based model that accurately represents a wide variety of body shapes in natural human poses. The parameters of the model are learned from data including the rest pose template, blend weights, pose-dependent blend shapes, identity-dependent blend shapes, and a regressor from vertices to joint locations. Unlike previous models, the pose-dependent blend shapes are a linear function of the elements of the pose rotation matrices. This simple formulation enables training the entire model from a relatively large number of aligned 3D meshes of different people in different poses. We quantitatively evaluate variants of SMPL using linear or dual-quaternion blend skinning and show that both are more accurate than a Blend-SCAPE model trained on the same data. We also extend SMPL to realistically model dynamic soft-tissue deformations. Because it is based on blend skinning, SMPL is compatible with existing rendering engines and we make it available for research purposes.

@article{SMPL:2015,
  title = {{SMPL}: A Skinned Multi-Person Linear Model},
  author = {Loper, Matthew and Mahmood, Naureen and Romero, Javier and Pons-Moll, Gerard and Black, Michael J.},
  journal = {ACM Trans. Graphics (Proc. SIGGRAPH Asia)},
  volume = {34},
  number = {6},
  pages = {248:1--248:16},
  publisher = {ACM},
  address = {New York, NY},
  month = oct,
  year = {2015},
  doi = {10.1145/2816795.2818013},
  month_numeric = {10}
}