Animating an object in 3D often requires an articulated structure, e.g. a kinematic chain or skeleton of the manipulated object with proper skinning weights, to obtain smooth movements and surface deformations. However, existing models that allow direct pose manipulations are either limited to specific object categories or built with specialized equipment. To reduce the work needed for creating animatable 3D models, we propose a novel reconstruction method that learns an animatable kinematic chain for any articulated object. Our method operates on monocular videos without prior knowledge of the object's shape or underlying structure. Our approach is on par with state-of-the-art 3D surface reconstruction methods on various articulated object categories while enabling direct pose manipulations by re-posing the learned kinematic chain.

翻译：在三维空间中为物体制作动画通常需要借助有铰接结构的模型，例如带有恰当蒙皮权重的运动学链或骨架，以实现平滑运动与表面形变。然而，现有支持直接姿态操控的模型要么局限于特定物体类别，要么需要专用设备构建。为降低创建可动画化三维模型的工作量，我们提出一种新型重建方法，可针对任意铰接物体学习其可动画化的运动学链。本方法仅需单目视频输入，无需预先了解物体的形状或底层结构。在多种铰接物体类别的三维表面重建任务中，我们的方法与当前最优方法性能相当，同时可通过重新调整学习到的运动学链实现直接姿态操控。