# Implicit Neural Deformation for Sparse-View Face Reconstruction

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2112.02494 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2112.02494/

## Key facts

- Cited by 4 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 43 of its 70 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 5 Dec 2021.

## Builds on (most cited first, 30 of 43)

- [DeepSDF: Learning Continuous Signed Distance Functions for Shape Representation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1901.05103/) (2019)
- [Fourier Features Let Networks Learn High Frequency Functions in Low Dimensional Domains](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2006.10739/) (2020)
- [NeuS: Learning Neural Implicit Surfaces by Volume Rendering for Multi-view Reconstruction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2106.10689/) (2021)
- [pixelNeRF: Neural Radiance Fields from One or Few Images](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2012.02190/) (2020)
- [Volume Rendering of Neural Implicit Surfaces](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2106.12052/) (2021)
- [Neural Sparse Voxel Fields](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2007.11571/) (2020)
- [Scene Representation Networks: Continuous 3D-Structure-Aware Neural Scene Representations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1906.01618/) (2019)
- [PIFu: Pixel-Aligned Implicit Function for High-Resolution Clothed Human Digitization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1905.05172/) (2019)
- [Open3D: A Modern Library for 3D Data Processing](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1801.09847/) (2018)
- [Implicit Geometric Regularization for Learning Shapes](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2002.10099/) (2020)
- [BiSeNet: Bilateral Segmentation Network for Real-time Semantic Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1808.00897/) (2018)
- [FastNeRF: High-Fidelity Neural Rendering at 200FPS](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.10380/) (2021)
- [Accurate 3D Face Reconstruction with Weakly-Supervised Learning: From Single Image to Image Set](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1903.08527/) (2019)
- [Dynamic Neural Radiance Fields for Monocular 4D Facial Avatar Reconstruction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2012.03065/) (2020)
- [Neural Geometric Level of Detail: Real-time Rendering with Implicit 3D Shapes](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2101.10994/) (2021)
- [SAL: Sign Agnostic Learning of Shapes from Raw Data](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1911.10414/) (2019)
- [Local Implicit Grid Representations for 3D Scenes](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2003.08981/) (2020)
- [3D Morphable Face Models -- Past, Present and Future](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1909.01815/) (2019)
- [FaceScape: a Large-scale High Quality 3D Face Dataset and Detailed Riggable 3D Face Prediction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2003.13989/) (2020)
- [Joint 3D Face Reconstruction and Dense Alignment with Position Map Regression Network](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1803.07835/) (2018)
- [DIST: Rendering Deep Implicit Signed Distance Function with Differentiable Sphere Tracing](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1911.13225/) (2019)
- [Learning to Regress 3D Face Shape and Expression from an Image without 3D Supervision](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1905.06817/) (2019)
- [DeRF: Decomposed Radiance Fields](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2011.12490/) (2020)
- [Deformed Implicit Field: Modeling 3D Shapes with Learned Dense Correspondence](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2011.13650/) (2020)
- [Regressing Robust and Discriminative 3D Morphable Models with a very Deep Neural Network](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1612.04904/) (2016)
- [i3DMM: Deep Implicit 3D Morphable Model of Human Heads](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2011.14143/) (2020)
- [Neural Lumigraph Rendering](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.11571/) (2021)
- [Deep Implicit Templates for 3D Shape Representation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2011.14565/) (2020)
- [FML: Face Model Learning from Videos](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1812.07603/) (2018)
- [Self-Supervised Monocular 3D Face Reconstruction by Occlusion-Aware Multi-view Geometry Consistency](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2007.12494/) (2020)

## Built on by (most cited first, 4 of 4)

- [FatesGS: Fast and Accurate Sparse-View Surface Reconstruction using Gaussian Splatting with Depth-Feature Consistency](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2501.04628/) (2025)
- [Single-Shot Implicit Morphable Faces with Consistent Texture Parameterization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.03043/) (2023)
- [Deformable Model-Driven Neural Rendering for High-Fidelity 3D Reconstruction of Human Heads Under Low-View Settings](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.13855/) (2023)
- [Democratizing the Creation of Animatable Facial Avatars](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2401.16534/) (2024)

## Abstract (arXiv)

In this work, we present a new method for 3D face reconstruction from sparse-view RGB images. Unlike previous methods which are built upon 3D morphable models (3DMMs) with limited details, we leverage an implicit representation to encode rich geometric features. Our overall pipeline consists of two major components, including a geometry network, which learns a deformable neural signed distance function (SDF) as the 3D face representation, and a rendering network, which learns to render on-surface points of the neural SDF to match the input images via self-supervised optimization. To handle in-the-wild sparse-view input of the same target with different expressions at test time, we propose residual latent code to effectively expand the shape space of the learned implicit face representation as well as a novel view-switch loss to enforce consistency among different views. Our experimental results on several benchmark datasets demonstrate that our approach outperforms alternative baselines and achieves superior face reconstruction results compared to state-of-the-art methods.