SMAL-pets: SMAL Based Avatars of Pets from Single Image

TL;DR

SMAL-pets is a novel framework that creates high-quality, editable 3D animal avatars from a single image, combining 3D Gaussian Splatting with the SMAL model to enable realistic, customizable, and animatable pet representations.

Contribution

The paper introduces a hybrid architecture integrating 3D Gaussian Splatting with SMAL for single-image animal avatar reconstruction and a multimodal editing suite for natural language-based customization.

Findings

Produces high-fidelity, editable animal avatars from a single image.

Enables complex animations through natural language prompts.

Bridges the gap between reconstruction and generative modeling.

Abstract

Creating high-fidelity, animatable 3D dog avatars remains a formidable challenge in computer vision. Unlike human digital doubles, animal reconstruction faces a critical shortage of large-scale, annotated datasets for specialized applications. Furthermore, the immense morphological diversity across species, breeds, and crosses, which varies significantly in size, proportions, and features, complicates the generalization of existing models. Current reconstruction methods often struggle to capture realistic fur textures. Additionally, ensuring these avatars are fully editable and capable of performing complex, naturalistic movements typically necessitates labor-intensive manual mesh manipulation and expert rigging. This paper introduces SMAL-pets, a comprehensive framework that generates high-quality, editable animal avatars from a single input image. Our approach bridges the gap between reconstruction and generative modeling by leveraging a hybrid architecture. Our method integrates 3D Gaussian Splatting with the SMAL parametric model to provide a representation that is both visually high-fidelity and anatomically grounded. We introduce a multimodal editing suite that enables users to refine the avatar's appearance and execute complex animations through direct textual prompts. By allowing users to control both the aesthetic and behavioral aspects of the model via natural language, SMAL-pets provides a flexible, robust tool for animation and virtual reality.