# TalkingGaussian: Structure-Persistent 3D Talking Head Synthesis via Gaussian Splatting

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2404.15264 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.15264/

## Key facts

- Cited by 60 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 40 of its 59 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 23 Apr 2024.

## Builds on (most cited first, 30 of 40)

- [Adam: A Method for Stochastic Optimization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1412.6980/) (2014)
- [The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Deep Features as a Perceptual Metric](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1801.03924/) (2018)
- [3D Gaussian Splatting for Real-Time Radiance Field Rendering](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2308.04079/) (2023)
- [wav2vec 2.0: A Framework for Self-Supervised Learning of Speech Representations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2006.11477/) (2020)
- [Instant Neural Graphics Primitives with a Multiresolution Hash Encoding](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2201.05989/) (2022)
- [HuBERT: Self-Supervised Speech Representation Learning by Masked Prediction of Hidden Units](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2106.07447/) (2021)
- [D-NeRF: Neural Radiance Fields for Dynamic Scenes](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2011.13961/) (2020)
- [Efficient Geometry-aware 3D Generative Adversarial Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2112.07945/) (2021)
- [Nerfies: Deformable Neural Radiance Fields](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2011.12948/) (2020)
- [4D Gaussian Splatting for Real-Time Dynamic Scene Rendering](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2310.08528/) (2023)
- [Deformable 3D Gaussians for High-Fidelity Monocular Dynamic Scene Reconstruction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2309.13101/) (2023)
- [Dynamic 3D Gaussians: Tracking by Persistent Dynamic View Synthesis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2308.09713/) (2023)
- [A Lip Sync Expert Is All You Need for Speech to Lip Generation In The Wild](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2008.10010/) (2020)
- [BiSeNet: Bilateral Segmentation Network for Real-time Semantic Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1808.00897/) (2018)
- [MaskGAN: Towards Diverse and Interactive Facial Image Manipulation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1907.11922/) (2019)
- [Deep Speech: Scaling up end-to-end speech recognition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1412.5567/) (2014)
- [Fast Dynamic Radiance Fields with Time-Aware Neural Voxels](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2205.15285/) (2022)
- [AD-NeRF: Audio Driven Neural Radiance Fields for Talking Head Synthesis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.11078/) (2021)
- [GaussianAvatars: Photorealistic Head Avatars with Rigged 3D Gaussians](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.02069/) (2023)
- [Hierarchical Cross-Modal Talking Face Generationwith Dynamic Pixel-Wise Loss](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1905.03820/) (2019)
- [Neural Voice Puppetry: Audio-driven Facial Reenactment](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1912.05566/) (2019)
- [Gaussian-Flow: 4D Reconstruction with Dynamic 3D Gaussian Particle](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.03431/) (2023)
- [X2Face: A network for controlling face generation by using images, audio, and pose codes](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1807.10550/) (2018)
- [Lip Movements Generation at a Glance](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1803.10404/) (2018)
- [GeneFace: Generalized and High-Fidelity Audio-Driven 3D Talking Face Synthesis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2301.13430/) (2023)
- [DynMF: Neural Motion Factorization for Real-time Dynamic View Synthesis with 3D Gaussian Splatting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.00112/) (2023)
- [Semantic-Aware Implicit Neural Audio-Driven Video Portrait Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2201.07786/) (2022)
- [Identity-Preserving Talking Face Generation with Landmark and Appearance Priors](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.08293/) (2023)
- [Learning Dynamic Facial Radiance Fields for Few-Shot Talking Head Synthesis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2207.11770/) (2022)
- [Real3D-Portrait: One-shot Realistic 3D Talking Portrait Synthesis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2401.08503/) (2024)

## Built on by (most cited first, 30 of 60)

- [Generalizable and Animatable Gaussian Head Avatar](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.07971/) (2024)
- [3D Gaussian Splatting: Survey, Technologies, Challenges, and Opportunities](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.17418/) (2024)
- [DashGaussian: Optimizing 3D Gaussian Splatting in 200 Seconds](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.18402/) (2025)
- [Human Motion Video Generation: A Survey](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2509.03883/) (2025)
- [StreamAvatar: Streaming Diffusion Models for Real-Time Interactive Human Avatars](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2512.22065/) (2025)
- [InsTaG: Learning Personalized 3D Talking Head from Few-Second Video](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2502.20387/) (2025)
- [MagicInfinite: Generating Infinite Talking Videos with Your Words and Voice](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.05978/) (2025)
- [SkyReels-Audio: Omni Audio-Conditioned Talking Portraits in Video Diffusion Transformers](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2506.00830/) (2025)
- [MegActor-Sigma: Unlocking Flexible Mixed-Modal Control in Portrait Animation with Diffusion Transformer](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2408.14975/) (2024)
- [SEGA: Drivable 3D Gaussian Head Avatar from a Single Image](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2504.14373/) (2025)
- [AV-Flow: Transforming Text to Audio-Visual Human-like Interactions](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2502.13133/) (2025)
- [SyncTalk++: High-Fidelity and Efficient Synchronized Talking Heads Synthesis Using Gaussian Splatting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2506.14742/) (2025)
- [PersonaLive! Expressive Portrait Image Animation for Live Streaming](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2512.11253/) (2025)
- [DEGSTalk: Decomposed Per-Embedding Gaussian Fields for Hair-Preserving Talking Face Synthesis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2412.20148/) (2024)
- [FastAvatar: Instant 3D Gaussian Splatting for Faces from Single Unconstrained Poses](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2508.18389/) (2025)
- [Advancing Talking Head Generation: A Comprehensive Survey of Multi-Modal Methodologies, Datasets, Evaluation Metrics, and Loss Functions](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2507.02900/) (2025)
- [Audio Driven Real-Time Facial Animation for Social Telepresence](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2510.01176/) (2025)
- [PointTalk: Audio-Driven Dynamic Lip Point Cloud for 3D Gaussian-based Talking Head Synthesis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2412.08504/) (2024)
- [Exploring Timeline Control for Facial Motion Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.20861/) (2025)
- [GGTalker: Talking Head Systhesis with Generalizable Gaussian Priors and Identity-Specific Adaptation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2506.21513/) (2025)
- [HyperGaussians: High-Dimensional Gaussian Splatting for High-Fidelity Animatable Face Avatars](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2507.02803/) (2025)
- [GeoAvatar: Adaptive Geometrical Gaussian Splatting for 3D Head Avatar](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2507.18155/) (2025)
- [VASA-3D: Lifelike Audio-Driven Gaussian Head Avatars from a Single Image](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2512.14677/) (2025)
- [EmoTaG: Emotion-Aware Talking Head Synthesis on Gaussian Splatting with Few-Shot Personalization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.21332/) (2026)
- [When Words Smile: Generating Diverse Emotional Facial Expressions from Text](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2412.02508/) (2024)
- [E3RG: Building Explicit Emotion-driven Empathetic Response Generation System with Multimodal Large Language Model](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2508.12854/) (2025)
- [GaussianHeadTalk: Wobble-Free 3D Talking Heads with Audio Driven Gaussian Splatting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2512.10939/) (2025)
- [ESGaussianFace: Emotional and Stylized Audio-Driven Facial Animation via 3D Gaussian Splatting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2601.01847/) (2026)
- [RSATalker: Realistic Socially-Aware Talking Head Generation for Multi-Turn Conversation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2601.10606/) (2026)
- [EditYourself: Audio-Driven Generation and Manipulation of Talking Head Videos with Diffusion Transformers](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2601.22127/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Radiance fields have demonstrated impressive performance in synthesizing lifelike 3D talking heads. However, due to the difficulty in fitting steep appearance changes, the prevailing paradigm that presents facial motions by directly modifying point appearance may lead to distortions in dynamic regions. To tackle this challenge, we introduce TalkingGaussian, a deformation-based radiance fields framework for high-fidelity talking head synthesis. Leveraging the point-based Gaussian Splatting, facial motions can be represented in our method by applying smooth and continuous deformations to persistent Gaussian primitives, without requiring to learn the difficult appearance change like previous methods. Due to this simplification, precise facial motions can be synthesized while keeping a highly intact facial feature. Under such a deformation paradigm, we further identify a face-mouth motion inconsistency that would affect the learning of detailed speaking motions. To address this conflict, we decompose the model into two branches separately for the face and inside mouth areas, therefore simplifying the learning tasks to help reconstruct more accurate motion and structure of the mouth region. Extensive experiments demonstrate that our method renders high-quality lip-synchronized talking head videos, with better facial fidelity and higher efficiency compared with previous methods.