High-Fidelity 3D Digital Human Head Creation from RGB-D Selfies
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Abstract (arXiv)
We present a fully automatic system that can produce high-fidelity, photo-realistic 3D digital human heads with a consumer RGB-D selfie camera. The system only needs the user to take a short selfie RGB-D video while rotating his/her head, and can produce a high quality head reconstruction in less than 30 seconds. Our main contribution is a new facial geometry modeling and reflectance synthesis procedure that significantly improves the state-of-the-art. Specifically, given the input video a two-stage frame selection procedure is first employed to select a few high-quality frames for reconstruction. Then a differentiable renderer based 3D Morphable Model (3DMM) fitting algorithm is applied to recover facial geometries from multiview RGB-D data, which takes advantages of a powerful 3DMM basis constructed with extensive data generation and perturbation. Our 3DMM has much larger expressive capacities than conventional 3DMM, allowing us to recover more accurate facial geometry using merely linear basis. For reflectance synthesis, we present a hybrid approach that combines parametric fitting and CNNs to synthesize high-resolution albedo/normal maps with realistic hair/pore/wrinkle details. Results show that our system can produce faithful 3D digital human faces with extremely realistic details. The main code and the newly constructed 3DMM basis is publicly available.
Key facts. Cited by 47 papers in the map (data through 7 Oct 2026). First posted on arXiv 12 Oct 2020.
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Citing papers per year: 2022: 11; 2023: 13; 2024: 8; 2025: 11; 2026: 4.
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- 2022FaceVerse: a Fine-grained and Detail-controllable 3D Face Morphable Model from a Hybrid Datasetcited by 98
- 2022FFHQ-UV: Normalized Facial UV-Texture Dataset for 3D Face Reconstructioncited by 39
- 2023FitMe: Deep Photorealistic 3D Morphable Model Avatarscited by 38
- 2024MeGA: Hybrid Mesh-Gaussian Head Avatar for High-Fidelity Rendering and Head Editingcited by 37
- 2023MonoNPHM: Dynamic Head Reconstruction from Monocular Videoscited by 35
- 2023Relightify: Relightable 3D Faces from a Single Image via Diffusion Modelscited by 34
- 2022REALY: Rethinking the Evaluation of 3D Face Reconstructioncited by 32
- 2022NeRFInvertor: High Fidelity NeRF-GAN Inversion for Single-shot Real Image Animationcited by 23
- 2023HiFace: High-Fidelity 3D Face Reconstruction by Learning Static and Dynamic Detailscited by 22
- 2024TextToon: Real-Time Text Toonify Head Avatar from Single Videocited by 21
- 2022Video-driven Neural Physically-based Facial Asset for Productioncited by 17
- 2023GANHead: Towards Generative Animatable Neural Head Avatarscited by 17
35 more
- 2022Neural Parameterization for Dynamic Human Head Editingcited by 16
- 2024ReSyncer: Rewiring Style-based Generator for Unified Audio-Visually Synced Facial Performercited by 16
- 2023Learning Audio-Driven Viseme Dynamics for 3D Face Animationcited by 12
- 2025Cafe-Talk: Generating 3D Talking Face Animation with Multimodal Coarse- and Fine-grained Controlcited by 12
- 2022BareSkinNet: De-makeup and De-lighting via 3D Face Reconstructioncited by 10
- 2023Makeup Extraction of 3D Representation via Illumination-Aware Image Decompositioncited by 8
- 2023Implicit Shape and Appearance Priors for Few-Shot Full Head Reconstructioncited by 8
- 2023Text-Guided 3D Face Synthesis -- From Generation to Editingcited by 8
- 2024Topo4D: Topology-Preserving Gaussian Splatting for High-Fidelity 4D Head Capturecited by 8
- 2024Makeup Prior Models for 3D Facial Makeup Estimation and Applicationscited by 7
- 2025FreeUV: Ground-Truth-Free Realistic Facial UV Texture Recovery via Cross-Assembly Inference Strategycited by 7
- 2022Multi-NeuS: 3D Head Portraits from Single Image with Neural Implicit Functionscited by 6
- 2023A Perceptual Shape Loss for Monocular 3D Face Reconstructioncited by 6
- 2025Facial Appearance Capture at Home with Patch-Level Reflectance Priorcited by 5
- 2022Novel View Synthesis for High-fidelity Headshot Scenescited by 4
- 2025SVG-Head: Hybrid Surface-Volumetric Gaussians for High-Fidelity Head Reconstruction and Real-Time Editingcited by 4
- 2022SCULPTOR: Skeleton-Consistent Face Creation Using a Learned Parametric Generatorcited by 3
- 2025EmoHead: Emotional Talking Head via Manipulating Semantic Expression Parameterscited by 3
- 2022Dressi: A Hardware-Agnostic Differentiable Renderer with Reactive Shader Packing and Soft Rasterizationcited by 2
- 2023Unpaired Multi-domain Attribute Translation of 3D Facial Shapes with a Square and Symmetric Geometric Mapcited by 2
- 2024Multimodal Diffusion Transformer with Memory Bank for Scalable Long-Duration Talking Video Generationcited by 2
- 2025High-Quality Facial Albedo Generation for 3D Face Reconstruction from a Single Image using a Coarse-to-Fine Approachcited by 2
- 2023A lightweight 3D dense facial landmark estimation model from position map datacited by 1
- 2023EMS: 3D Eyebrow Modeling from Single-view Imagescited by 1
- 2024Learning to Decouple the Lights for 3D Face Texture Modelingcited by 1
- 2026REFA: Real-time Egocentric Facial Animations for Virtual Realitycited by 1
- 2026Monocular Avatar Reconstruction via Cascaded Diffusion Priors and UV-Space Differentiable Shadingcited by 1
- 2024Capturing the Unseen: Vision-Free Facial Motion Capture Using Inertial Measurement Unitscited by 0
- 2025High-Fidelity Human Avatars from Laptop Webcams using Edge Computecited by 0
- 2025GLVD: Guided Learned Vertex Descentcited by 0
- 2025PoreTrack3D: A Benchmark for Dynamic 3D Gaussian Splatting in Pore-Scale Facial Trajectory Trackingcited by 0
- 2025Using Gaussian Splats to Create High-Fidelity Facial Geometry and Texturecited by 0
- 2025Multi-scale Attention-Guided Intrinsic Decomposition and Rendering Pass Prediction for Facial Imagescited by 0
- 20263DXTalker: Unifying Identity, Lip Sync, Emotion, and Spatial Dynamics in Expressive 3D Talking Avatarscited by 0
- 2026Enhancing Facial Expression Recognition in Head-Mounted Displays with Synthetic Datacited by 0
- 2026Enhancing Facial Expression Recognition in Head-Mounted Displays with Synthetic Data5 Jul 2026
- 2026Monocular Avatar Reconstruction via Cascaded Diffusion Priors and UV-Space Differentiable Shading26 Jun 2026
- 20263DXTalker: Unifying Identity, Lip Sync, Emotion, and Spatial Dynamics in Expressive 3D Talking Avatars11 Feb 2026
- 2026REFA: Real-time Egocentric Facial Animations for Virtual Reality7 Jan 2026
- 2025Multi-scale Attention-Guided Intrinsic Decomposition and Rendering Pass Prediction for Facial Images18 Dec 2025
- 2025Using Gaussian Splats to Create High-Fidelity Facial Geometry and Texture18 Dec 2025
- 2025PoreTrack3D: A Benchmark for Dynamic 3D Gaussian Splatting in Pore-Scale Facial Trajectory Tracking2 Dec 2025
- 2025GLVD: Guided Learned Vertex Descent7 Oct 2025
- 2025SVG-Head: Hybrid Surface-Volumetric Gaussians for High-Fidelity Head Reconstruction and Real-Time Editing13 Aug 2025
- 2025High-Quality Facial Albedo Generation for 3D Face Reconstruction from a Single Image using a Coarse-to-Fine Approach16 Jun 2025
- 2025Facial Appearance Capture at Home with Patch-Level Reflectance Prior4 Jun 2025
- 2025EmoHead: Emotional Talking Head via Manipulating Semantic Expression Parameters25 Mar 2025
35 more
- 2025FreeUV: Ground-Truth-Free Realistic Facial UV Texture Recovery via Cross-Assembly Inference Strategy21 Mar 2025
- 2025Cafe-Talk: Generating 3D Talking Face Animation with Multimodal Coarse- and Fine-grained Control14 Mar 2025
- 2025High-Fidelity Human Avatars from Laptop Webcams using Edge Compute4 Feb 2025
- 2024Learning to Decouple the Lights for 3D Face Texture Modeling11 Dec 2024
- 2024Multimodal Diffusion Transformer with Memory Bank for Scalable Long-Duration Talking Video Generation24 Nov 2024
- 2024TextToon: Real-Time Text Toonify Head Avatar from Single Video23 Sep 2024
- 2024ReSyncer: Rewiring Style-based Generator for Unified Audio-Visually Synced Facial Performer6 Aug 2024
- 2024Topo4D: Topology-Preserving Gaussian Splatting for High-Fidelity 4D Head Capture1 Jun 2024
- 2024MeGA: Hybrid Mesh-Gaussian Head Avatar for High-Fidelity Rendering and Head Editing29 Apr 2024
- 2024Makeup Prior Models for 3D Facial Makeup Estimation and Applications26 Mar 2024
- 2024Capturing the Unseen: Vision-Free Facial Motion Capture Using Inertial Measurement Units3 Feb 2024
- 2023MonoNPHM: Dynamic Head Reconstruction from Monocular Videos11 Dec 2023
- 2023Text-Guided 3D Face Synthesis -- From Generation to Editing1 Dec 2023
- 2023A Perceptual Shape Loss for Monocular 3D Face Reconstruction30 Oct 2023
- 2023Implicit Shape and Appearance Priors for Few-Shot Full Head Reconstruction12 Oct 2023
- 2023EMS: 3D Eyebrow Modeling from Single-view Images22 Sep 2023
- 2023A lightweight 3D dense facial landmark estimation model from position map data29 Aug 2023
- 2023Unpaired Multi-domain Attribute Translation of 3D Facial Shapes with a Square and Symmetric Geometric Map25 Aug 2023
- 2023FitMe: Deep Photorealistic 3D Morphable Model Avatars16 May 2023
- 2023Relightify: Relightable 3D Faces from a Single Image via Diffusion Models10 May 2023
- 2023GANHead: Towards Generative Animatable Neural Head Avatars8 Apr 2023
- 2023HiFace: High-Fidelity 3D Face Reconstruction by Learning Static and Dynamic Details20 Mar 2023
- 2023Makeup Extraction of 3D Representation via Illumination-Aware Image Decomposition26 Feb 2023
- 2023Learning Audio-Driven Viseme Dynamics for 3D Face Animation15 Jan 2023
- 2022NeRFInvertor: High Fidelity NeRF-GAN Inversion for Single-shot Real Image Animation30 Nov 2022
- 2022FFHQ-UV: Normalized Facial UV-Texture Dataset for 3D Face Reconstruction25 Nov 2022
- 2022BareSkinNet: De-makeup and De-lighting via 3D Face Reconstruction19 Sep 2022
- 2022SCULPTOR: Skeleton-Consistent Face Creation Using a Learned Parametric Generator14 Sep 2022
- 2022Multi-NeuS: 3D Head Portraits from Single Image with Neural Implicit Functions7 Sep 2022
- 2022Neural Parameterization for Dynamic Human Head Editing1 Jul 2022
- 2022Novel View Synthesis for High-fidelity Headshot Scenes31 May 2022
- 2022Dressi: A Hardware-Agnostic Differentiable Renderer with Reactive Shader Packing and Soft Rasterization4 Apr 2022
- 2022FaceVerse: a Fine-grained and Detail-controllable 3D Face Morphable Model from a Hybrid Dataset26 Mar 2022
- 2022REALY: Rethinking the Evaluation of 3D Face Reconstruction18 Mar 2022
- 2022Video-driven Neural Physically-based Facial Asset for Production11 Feb 2022
- 2023Relightify: Relightable 3D Faces from a Single Image via Diffusion Modelscited by 34
- 2023Text-Guided 3D Face Synthesis -- From Generation to Editingcited by 8
- 2025Facial Appearance Capture at Home with Patch-Level Reflectance Priorcited by 5
- 2024Multimodal Diffusion Transformer with Memory Bank for Scalable Long-Duration Talking Video Generationcited by 2
- 2026Monocular Avatar Reconstruction via Cascaded Diffusion Priors and UV-Space Differentiable Shadingcited by 1
- 2026Monocular Avatar Reconstruction via Cascaded Diffusion Priors and UV-Space Differentiable Shading26 Jun 2026
- 2025Facial Appearance Capture at Home with Patch-Level Reflectance Prior4 Jun 2025
- 2024Multimodal Diffusion Transformer with Memory Bank for Scalable Long-Duration Talking Video Generation24 Nov 2024
- 2023Text-Guided 3D Face Synthesis -- From Generation to Editing1 Dec 2023
- 2023Relightify: Relightable 3D Faces from a Single Image via Diffusion Models10 May 2023
- 2022FaceVerse: a Fine-grained and Detail-controllable 3D Face Morphable Model from a Hybrid Datasetcited by 98
- 2022FFHQ-UV: Normalized Facial UV-Texture Dataset for 3D Face Reconstructioncited by 39
- 2023FitMe: Deep Photorealistic 3D Morphable Model Avatarscited by 38
- 2024MeGA: Hybrid Mesh-Gaussian Head Avatar for High-Fidelity Rendering and Head Editingcited by 37
- 2023MonoNPHM: Dynamic Head Reconstruction from Monocular Videoscited by 35
- 2022REALY: Rethinking the Evaluation of 3D Face Reconstructioncited by 32
- 2022NeRFInvertor: High Fidelity NeRF-GAN Inversion for Single-shot Real Image Animationcited by 23
- 2023HiFace: High-Fidelity 3D Face Reconstruction by Learning Static and Dynamic Detailscited by 22
- 2024TextToon: Real-Time Text Toonify Head Avatar from Single Videocited by 21
- 2022Video-driven Neural Physically-based Facial Asset for Productioncited by 17
- 2023GANHead: Towards Generative Animatable Neural Head Avatarscited by 17
- 2022Neural Parameterization for Dynamic Human Head Editingcited by 16
12 most cited of 42 All 42 (JSON)
- 2026Enhancing Facial Expression Recognition in Head-Mounted Displays with Synthetic Data5 Jul 2026
- 20263DXTalker: Unifying Identity, Lip Sync, Emotion, and Spatial Dynamics in Expressive 3D Talking Avatars11 Feb 2026
- 2026REFA: Real-time Egocentric Facial Animations for Virtual Reality7 Jan 2026
- 2025Multi-scale Attention-Guided Intrinsic Decomposition and Rendering Pass Prediction for Facial Images18 Dec 2025
- 2025Using Gaussian Splats to Create High-Fidelity Facial Geometry and Texture18 Dec 2025
- 2025PoreTrack3D: A Benchmark for Dynamic 3D Gaussian Splatting in Pore-Scale Facial Trajectory Tracking2 Dec 2025
- 2025GLVD: Guided Learned Vertex Descent7 Oct 2025
- 2025SVG-Head: Hybrid Surface-Volumetric Gaussians for High-Fidelity Head Reconstruction and Real-Time Editing13 Aug 2025
- 2025High-Quality Facial Albedo Generation for 3D Face Reconstruction from a Single Image using a Coarse-to-Fine Approach16 Jun 2025
- 2025EmoHead: Emotional Talking Head via Manipulating Semantic Expression Parameters25 Mar 2025
- 2025FreeUV: Ground-Truth-Free Realistic Facial UV Texture Recovery via Cross-Assembly Inference Strategy21 Mar 2025
- 2025Cafe-Talk: Generating 3D Talking Face Animation with Multimodal Coarse- and Fine-grained Control14 Mar 2025
12 newest of 42 All 42 (JSON)