# Finding Directions in GAN's Latent Space for Neural Face Reenactment

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2202.00046 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2202.00046/

## Key facts

- Cited by 27 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 57 of its 72 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 31 Jan 2022.

## Builds on (most cited first, 30 of 57)

- [Adam: A Method for Stochastic Optimization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1412.6980/) (2014)
- [PyTorch: An Imperative Style, High-Performance Deep Learning Library](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1912.01703/) (2019)
- [The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Deep Features as a Perceptual Metric](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1801.03924/) (2018)
- [A Style-Based Generator Architecture for Generative Adversarial Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1812.04948/) (2018)
- [Analyzing and Improving the Image Quality of StyleGAN](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1912.04958/) (2019)
- [Progressive Growing of GANs for Improved Quality, Stability, and Variation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1710.10196/) (2017)
- [Perceptual Losses for Real-Time Style Transfer and Super-Resolution](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1603.08155/) (2016)
- [Towards Accurate Generative Models of Video: A New Metric & Challenges](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1812.01717/) (2018)
- [Training Generative Adversarial Networks with Limited Data](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2006.06676/) (2020)
- [VoxCeleb2: Deep Speaker Recognition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1806.05622/) (2018)
- [InfoGAN: Interpretable Representation Learning by Information Maximizing Generative Adversarial Nets](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1606.03657/) (2016)
- [VoxCeleb: a large-scale speaker identification dataset](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1706.08612/) (2017)
- [Encoding in Style: a StyleGAN Encoder for Image-to-Image Translation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2008.00951/) (2020)
- [First Order Motion Model for Image Animation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2003.00196/) (2020)
- [Image2StyleGAN: How to Embed Images Into the StyleGAN Latent Space?](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1904.03189/) (2019)
- [GANSpace: Discovering Interpretable GAN Controls](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2004.02546/) (2020)
- [Designing an Encoder for StyleGAN Image Manipulation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2102.02766/) (2021)
- [How far are we from solving the 2D & 3D Face Alignment problem? (and a dataset of 230,000 3D facial landmarks)](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1703.07332/) (2017)
- [Learning an Animatable Detailed 3D Face Model from In-The-Wild Images](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2012.04012/) (2020)
- [One-Shot Free-View Neural Talking-Head Synthesis for Video Conferencing](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2011.15126/) (2020)
- [Pivotal Tuning for Latent-based Editing of Real Images](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2106.05744/) (2021)
- [In-Domain GAN Inversion for Real Image Editing](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2004.00049/) (2020)
- [Closed-Form Factorization of Latent Semantics in GANs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2007.06600/) (2020)
- [InterFaceGAN: Interpreting the Disentangled Face Representation Learned by GANs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2005.09635/) (2020)
- [StyleFlow: Attribute-conditioned Exploration of StyleGAN-Generated Images using Conditional Continuous Normalizing Flows](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2008.02401/) (2020)
- [Unsupervised Discovery of Interpretable Directions in the GAN Latent Space](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2002.03754/) (2020)
- [Few-Shot Adversarial Learning of Realistic Neural Talking Head Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1905.08233/) (2019)
- [StyleRig: Rigging StyleGAN for 3D Control over Portrait Images](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2004.00121/) (2020)
- [ReStyle: A Residual-Based StyleGAN Encoder via Iterative Refinement](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2104.02699/) (2021)
- [Disentangled and Controllable Face Image Generation via 3D Imitative-Contrastive Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2004.11660/) (2020)

## Built on by (most cited first, 27 of 27)

- [StyleHEAT: One-Shot High-Resolution Editable Talking Face Generation via Pre-trained StyleGAN](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2203.04036/) (2022)
- [Progressive Disentangled Representation Learning for Fine-Grained Controllable Talking Head Synthesis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2211.14506/) (2022)
- [Talking Head Generation with Probabilistic Audio-to-Visual Diffusion Priors](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2212.04248/) (2022)
- [VLOGGER: Multimodal Diffusion for Embodied Avatar Synthesis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.08764/) (2024)
- [HyperReenact: One-Shot Reenactment via Jointly Learning to Refine and Retarget Faces](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2307.10797/) (2023)
- [High-Fidelity and Freely Controllable Talking Head Video Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2304.10168/) (2023)
- [PandA: Unsupervised Learning of Parts and Appearances in the Feature Maps of GANs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2206.00048/) (2022)
- [StyleMask: Disentangling the Style Space of StyleGAN2 for Neural Face Reenactment](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2209.13375/) (2022)
- [DiffusionAct: Controllable Diffusion Autoencoder for One-shot Face Reenactment](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.17217/) (2024)
- [NoisyTwins: Class-Consistent and Diverse Image Generation through StyleGANs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2304.05866/) (2023)
- [WeditGAN: Few-Shot Image Generation via Latent Space Relocation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.06671/) (2023)
- [ToonTalker: Cross-Domain Face Reenactment](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2308.12866/) (2023)
- [From Pixels to Portraits: A Comprehensive Survey of Talking Head Generation Techniques and Applications](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2308.16041/) (2023)
- [One-shot Neural Face Reenactment via Finding Directions in GAN's Latent Space](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2402.03553/) (2024)
- [FACEMUG: A Multimodal Generative and Fusion Framework for Local Facial Editing](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2412.19009/) (2024)
- [NTIRE 2025 XGC Quality Assessment Challenge: Methods and Results](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2506.02875/) (2025)
- [A Comprehensive Taxonomy and Analysis of Talking Head Synthesis: Techniques for Portrait Generation, Driving Mechanisms, and Editing](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.10553/) (2024)
- [Expressive Talking Head Video Encoding in StyleGAN2 Latent-Space](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2203.14512/) (2022)
- [MagicPortrait: Temporally Consistent Face Reenactment with 3D Geometric Guidance](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2504.21497/) (2025)
- [One-Shot Face Video Re-enactment using Hybrid Latent Spaces of StyleGAN2](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2302.07848/) (2023)
- [Controlling Character Motions without Observable Driving Source](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2308.06025/) (2023)
- [AniArtAvatar: Animatable 3D Art Avatar from a Single Image](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.17631/) (2024)
- [Unmasking Puppeteers: Leveraging Biometric Leakage to Expose Impersonation in AI-Based Videoconferencing](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2510.03548/) (2025)
- [Zero-Shot Visual Deepfake Detection: Can AI Predict and Prevent Fake Content Before It's Created?](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2509.18461/) (2025)
- [A Deep Learning Approach for Facial Attribute Manipulation and Reconstruction in Surveillance and Reconnaissance](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2506.06578/) (2025)
- [A Turn Toward Better Alignment: Few-Shot Generative Adaptation with Equivariant Feature Rotation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2512.21174/) (2025)
- [Training-Free Multi-Concept LoRA Composition with Prompt-Aware Weighting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2606.03792/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

This paper is on face/head reenactment where the goal is to transfer the facial pose (3D head orientation and expression) of a target face to a source face. Previous methods focus on learning embedding networks for identity and pose disentanglement which proves to be a rather hard task, degrading the quality of the generated images. We take a different approach, bypassing the training of such networks, by using (fine-tuned) pre-trained GANs which have been shown capable of producing high-quality facial images. Because GANs are characterized by weak controllability, the core of our approach is a method to discover which directions in latent GAN space are responsible for controlling facial pose and expression variations. We present a simple pipeline to learn such directions with the aid of a 3D shape model which, by construction, already captures disentangled directions for facial pose, identity and expression. Moreover, we show that by embedding real images in the GAN latent space, our method can be successfully used for the reenactment of real-world faces. Our method features several favorable properties including using a single source image (one-shot) and enabling cross-person reenactment. Our qualitative and quantitative results show that our approach often produces reenacted faces of significantly higher quality than those produced by state-of-the-art methods for the standard benchmarks of VoxCeleb1 & 2. Source code is available at: https://github.com/StelaBou/stylegan_directions_face_reenactment