# Face Animation with an Attribute-Guided Diffusion Model

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2304.03199 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2304.03199/

## Key facts

- Cited by 48 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Placed in Audio, speech and music, one of 14 directions in Diffusion models.
- Builds on 54 of its 64 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 6 Apr 2023.

## Placed in

- Diffusion models / [Audio, speech and music](https://mlsanity.com/diffusion/audio-speech-and-music/)

## Builds on (most cited first, 30 of 54)

- [Adam: A Method for Stochastic Optimization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1412.6980/) (2014)
- [Denoising Diffusion Probabilistic Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2006.11239/) (2020)
- [High-Resolution Image Synthesis with Latent Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2112.10752/) (2021)
- [Very Deep Convolutional Networks for Large-Scale Image Recognition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1409.1556/) (2014)
- [The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Deep Features as a Perceptual Metric](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1801.03924/) (2018)
- [Denoising Diffusion Implicit Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2010.02502/) (2020)
- [Deep Unsupervised Learning using Nonequilibrium Thermodynamics](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1503.03585/) (2015)
- [A Style-Based Generator Architecture for Generative Adversarial Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1812.04948/) (2018)
- [Rethinking the Inception Architecture for Computer Vision](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1512.00567/) (2015)
- [Analyzing and Improving the Image Quality of StyleGAN](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1912.04958/) (2019)
- [Video Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2204.03458/) (2022)
- [Image Super-Resolution via Iterative Refinement](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2104.07636/) (2021)
- [RePaint: Inpainting using Denoising Diffusion Probabilistic Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2201.09865/) (2022)
- [DiffWave: A Versatile Diffusion Model for Audio Synthesis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2009.09761/) (2020)
- [Palette: Image-to-Image Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2111.05826/) (2021)
- [Cascaded Diffusion Models for High Fidelity Image Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2106.15282/) (2021)
- [VoxCeleb2: Deep Speaker Recognition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1806.05622/) (2018)
- [MotionDiffuse: Text-Driven Human Motion Generation with Diffusion Model](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2208.15001/) (2022)
- [Diffusion Probabilistic Models for 3D Point Cloud Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.01458/) (2021)
- [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)
- [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)
- [Solving Inverse Problems in Medical Imaging with Score-Based Generative Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2111.08005/) (2021)
- [3D Shape Generation and Completion through Point-Voxel Diffusion](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2104.03670/) (2021)
- [Label-Efficient Semantic Segmentation with Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2112.03126/) (2021)
- [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)
- [SRDiff: Single Image Super-Resolution with Diffusion Probabilistic Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2104.14951/) (2021)
- [AD-NeRF: Audio Driven Neural Radiance Fields for Talking Head Synthesis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.11078/) (2021)

## Built on by (most cited first, 30 of 48)

- [LivePortrait: Efficient Portrait Animation with Stitching and Retargeting Control](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.03168/) (2024)
- [Follow-Your-Emoji: Fine-Controllable and Expressive Freestyle Portrait Animation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.01900/) (2024)
- [X-Portrait: Expressive Portrait Animation with Hierarchical Motion Attention](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.15931/) (2024)
- [AniTalker: Animate Vivid and Diverse Talking Faces through Identity-Decoupled Facial Motion Encoding](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2405.03121/) (2024)
- [Face Adapter for Pre-Trained Diffusion Models with Fine-Grained ID and Attribute Control](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2405.12970/) (2024)
- [Any2AnyTryon: Leveraging Adaptive Position Embeddings for Versatile Virtual Clothing Tasks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2501.15891/) (2025)
- [Follow-Your-Emoji-Faster: Towards Efficient, Fine-Controllable, and Expressive Freestyle Portrait Animation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2509.16630/) (2025)
- [DiffusionAvatars: Deferred Diffusion for High-fidelity 3D Head Avatars](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.18635/) (2023)
- [EditWorld: Simulating World Dynamics for Instruction-Following Image Editing](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2405.14785/) (2024)
- [Controllable Mind Visual Diffusion Model](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.10135/) (2023)
- [Trans4D: Realistic Geometry-Aware Transition for Compositional Text-to-4D Synthesis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.07155/) (2024)
- [A Generalist FaceX via Learning Unified Facial Representation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2401.00551/) (2023)
- [FaceShot: Bring Any Character into Life](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.00740/) (2025)
- [FantasyPortrait: Enhancing Multi-Character Portrait Animation with Expression-Augmented Diffusion Transformers](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2507.12956/) (2025)
- [LVFace: Progressive Cluster Optimization for Large Vision Models in Face Recognition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2501.13420/) (2025)
- [CemiFace: Center-based Semi-hard Synthetic Face Generation for Face Recognition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2409.18876/) (2024)
- [Monocular and Generalizable Gaussian Talking Head Animation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2504.00665/) (2025)
- [DiffuX2CT: Diffusion Learning to Reconstruct CT Images from Biplanar X-Rays](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.13545/) (2024)
- [DH-FaceVid-1K: A Large-Scale High-Quality Dataset for Face Video Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.07151/) (2024)
- [High-Fidelity Relightable Monocular Portrait Animation with Lighting-Controllable Video Diffusion Model](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2502.19894/) (2025)
- [PersonaLive! Expressive Portrait Image Animation for Live Streaming](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2512.11253/) (2025)
- [Synergizing Motion and Appearance: Multi-Scale Compensatory Codebooks for Talking Head Video Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2412.00719/) (2024)
- [Takin-ADA: Emotion Controllable Audio-Driven Animation with Canonical and Landmark Loss Optimization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.14283/) (2024)
- [EmojiDiff: Advanced Facial Expression Control with High Identity Preservation in Portrait Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2412.01254/) (2024)
- [InterAnimate: Taming Region-aware Diffusion Model for Realistic Human Interaction Animation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2504.10905/) (2025)
- [MagicPortrait: Temporally Consistent Face Reenactment with 3D Geometric Guidance](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2504.21497/) (2025)
- [Towards Consistent and Controllable Image Synthesis for Face Editing](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2502.02465/) (2025)
- [Unlock Pose Diversity: Accurate and Efficient Implicit Keypoint-based Spatiotemporal Diffusion for Audio-driven Talking Portrait](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.12963/) (2025)
- [Controlling Avatar Diffusion with Learnable Gaussian Embedding](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.15809/) (2025)
- [In-Context Sync-LoRA for Portrait Video Editing](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2512.03013/) (2025)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Face animation has achieved much progress in computer vision. However, prevailing GAN-based methods suffer from unnatural distortions and artifacts due to sophisticated motion deformation. In this paper, we propose a Face Animation framework with an attribute-guided Diffusion Model (FADM), which is the first work to exploit the superior modeling capacity of diffusion models for photo-realistic talking-head generation. To mitigate the uncontrollable synthesis effect of the diffusion model, we design an Attribute-Guided Conditioning Network (AGCN) to adaptively combine the coarse animation features and 3D face reconstruction results, which can incorporate appearance and motion conditions into the diffusion process. These specific designs help FADM rectify unnatural artifacts and distortions, and also enrich high-fidelity facial details through iterative diffusion refinements with accurate animation attributes. FADM can flexibly and effectively improve existing animation videos. Extensive experiments on widely used talking-head benchmarks validate the effectiveness of FADM over prior arts.