mlsanityData to 7 Oct 2026

3D Gaussian Blendshapes for Head Avatar Animation

arXiv 2404.19398 ↗First posted 30 Apr 2024cs.GR cs.CVcited by 58

Not on the map. Why?

Abstract (arXiv)

We introduce 3D Gaussian blendshapes for modeling photorealistic head avatars. Taking a monocular video as input, we learn a base head model of neutral expression, along with a group of expression blendshapes, each of which corresponds to a basis expression in classical parametric face models. Both the neutral model and expression blendshapes are represented as 3D Gaussians, which contain a few properties to depict the avatar appearance. The avatar model of an arbitrary expression can be effectively generated by combining the neutral model and expression blendshapes through linear blending of Gaussians with the expression coefficients. High-fidelity head avatar animations can be synthesized in real time using Gaussian splatting. Compared to state-of-the-art methods, our Gaussian blendshape representation better captures high-frequency details exhibited in input video, and achieves superior rendering performance.

Key facts. Cited by 58 papers in the map (data through 7 Oct 2026). Builds on 19 of its 45 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 30 Apr 2024.

Builds on

19 of 45 references.

References · 19

  1. 2014Adam: A Method for Stochastic Optimizationcited by 36,960
  2. 2018The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Deep Features as a Perceptual Metriccited by 11,029
  3. 20233D Gaussian Splatting for Real-Time Radiance Field Renderingcited by 6,141
  4. 2022Instant Neural Graphics Primitives with a Multiresolution Hash Encodingcited by 3,698
  5. 2020Learning an Animatable Detailed 3D Face Model from In-The-Wild Imagescited by 475
  6. 2020Dynamic Neural Radiance Fields for Monocular 4D Facial Avatar Reconstructioncited by 465
  7. 2021Mixture of Volumetric Primitives for Efficient Neural Renderingcited by 277
  8. 2022Towards Metrical Reconstruction of Human Facescited by 165
  9. 2018Nonlinear 3D Face Morphable Modelcited by 157
  10. 2022SelfRecon: Self Reconstruction Your Digital Avatar from Monocular Videocited by 144
  11. 2022Reconstructing Personalized Semantic Facial NeRF Models From Monocular Videocited by 128
  12. 2020i3DMM: Deep Implicit 3D Morphable Model of Human Headscited by 109
7 more
  1. 2023MonoGaussianAvatar: Monocular Gaussian Point-based Head Avatarcited by 89
  2. 2022AvatarMAV: Fast 3D Head Avatar Reconstruction Using Motion-Aware Neural Voxelscited by 73
  3. 2019Towards a complete 3D morphable model of the human headcited by 63
  4. 2023GaussianHead: High-fidelity Head Avatars with Learnable Gaussian Derivationcited by 46
  5. 2022Surface-Aligned Neural Radiance Fields for Controllable 3D Human Synthesiscited by 41
  6. 2021Riggable 3D Face Reconstruction via In-Network Optimizationcited by 31
  7. 2020Personalized Face Modeling for Improved Face Reconstruction and Motion Retargetingcited by 27

Built on by

Cited by year (2026 to 7 Oct)

Citing papers per year: 2024: 8; 2025: 27; 2026: 23.

58 papers.

Sort:

By area:

  1. 2024Generalizable and Animatable Gaussian Head Avatarcited by 95
  2. 20243D Gaussian Splatting: Survey, Technologies, Challenges, and Opportunitiescited by 77
  3. 2024FATE: Full-head Gaussian Avatar with Textural Editing from Monocular Videocited by 31
  4. 2025RGBAvatar: Reduced Gaussian Blendshapes for Online Modeling of Head Avatarscited by 27
  5. 2025HRAvatar: High-Quality and Relightable Gaussian Head Avatarcited by 24
  6. 2024Gaussian Eigen Models for Human Headscited by 21
  7. 20253D Gaussian Head Avatars with Expressive Dynamic Appearances by Compact Tensorial Representationscited by 13
  8. 2024Balanced 3DGS: Gaussian-wise Parallelism Rendering with Fine-Grained Tilingcited by 12
  9. 2025Real-time High-fidelity Gaussian Human Avatars with Position-based Interpolation of Spatially Distributed MLPscited by 12
  10. 2025SEGA: Drivable 3D Gaussian Head Avatar from a Single Imagecited by 11
  11. 2025SOAP: Style-Omniscient Animatable Portraitscited by 11
  12. 2024Gaussian Deja-vu: Creating Controllable 3D Gaussian Head-Avatars with Enhanced Generalization and Personalization Abilitiescited by 10
38 more
  1. 2024SqueezeMe: Mobile-Ready Distillation of Gaussian Full-Body Avatarscited by 10
  2. 2025FastAvatar: Instant 3D Gaussian Splatting for Faces from Single Unconstrained Posescited by 7
  3. 2025PanoLAM: Large Avatar Model for Gaussian Full-Head Synthesis from One-shot Unposed Imagecited by 7
  4. 2025GauRast: Enhancing GPU Triangle Rasterizers to Accelerate 3D Gaussian Splattingcited by 6
  5. 2025BecomingLit: Relightable Gaussian Avatars with Hybrid Neural Shadingcited by 6
  6. 2025Advancing Talking Head Generation: A Comprehensive Survey of Multi-Modal Methodologies, Datasets, Evaluation Metrics, and Loss Functionscited by 6
  7. 2025Audio-Driven Universal Gaussian Head Avatarscited by 6
  8. 2025FaceCraft4D: Animated 3D Facial Avatar Generation from a Single Imagecited by 5
  9. 2026FastGHA: Generalized Few-Shot 3D Gaussian Head Avatars with Real-Time Animationcited by 4
  10. 2025HyperGaussians: High-Dimensional Gaussian Splatting for High-Fidelity Animatable Face Avatarscited by 3
  11. 2025GeoAvatar: Adaptive Geometrical Gaussian Splatting for 3D Head Avatarcited by 3
  12. 2025STAvatar: Soft Binding and Temporal Density Control for Monocular 3D Head Avatars Reconstructioncited by 3
  13. 2025AGORA: Adversarial Generation Of Real-time Animatable 3D Gaussian Head Avatarscited by 3
  14. 2026EVolSplat4D: Efficient Volume-based Gaussian Splatting for 4D Urban Scene Synthesiscited by 3
  15. 2025Snapmoji: Instant Generation of Animatable Dual-Stylized Avatarscited by 2
  16. 2025ToonifyGB: StyleGAN-based Gaussian Blendshapes for 3D Stylized Head Avatarscited by 2
  17. 2025DynaSplat: Dynamic-Static Gaussian Splatting with Hierarchical Motion Decomposition for Scene Reconstructioncited by 2
  18. 2025TexAvatars : Hybrid Texel-3D Representations for Stable Rigging of Photorealistic Gaussian Head Avatarscited by 2
  19. 2026High-Fidelity Mobile Avatars with Pruned Local Blendshapescited by 2
  20. 2025EasyCraft: A Robust and Efficient Framework for Automatic Avatar Craftingcited by 1
  21. 2025LightHeadEd: Relightable & Editable Head Avatars from a Smartphonecited by 1
  22. 2025ArchitectHead: Continuous Level of Detail Control for 3D Gaussian Head Avatarscited by 1
  23. 2025GTAvatar: Bridging Gaussian Splatting and Texture Mapping for Relightable and Editable Gaussian Avatarscited by 1
  24. 2025FactorPortrait: Controllable Portrait Animation via Disentangled Expression, Pose, and Viewpointcited by 1
  25. 2026SketchRodGS: Sketch-based Extraction of Slender Geometries for Animating Gaussian Splatting Scenescited by 1
  26. 2026Mon3tr: Monocular 3D Telepresence with Pre-built Gaussian Avatars as Amortizationcited by 1
  27. 2026LegacyAvatars: Volumetric Face Avatars For Traditional Graphics Pipelinescited by 1
  28. 2026OmniFaceRig: Fully Automatic Inner-Mouth-Aware Face Rigging Across Diverse 3D Character Topologiescited by 1
  29. 2024High-quality Animatable Eyelid Shapes from Lightweight Capturescited by 0
  30. 2025MoGaFace: Momentum-Guided and Texture-Aware Gaussian Avatars for Consistent Facial Geometrycited by 0
  31. 2026GlassesGB: Controllable 2D GAN-Based Eyewear Personalization for 3D Gaussian Blendshapes Head Avatarscited by 0
  32. 2026GSwap: Realistic Head Swapping with Dynamic Neural Gaussian Fieldcited by 0
  33. 2026DipGuava: Disentangling Personalized Gaussian Features for 3D Head Avatars from Monocular Videocited by 0
  34. 2026PrivFedTalk: Privacy-Aware Federated Diffusion with Identity-Stable Adapters for Personalized Talking-Head Generationcited by 0
  35. 2026SketchFaceGS: Real-Time Sketch-Driven Face Editing and Generation with Gaussian Splattingcited by 0
  36. 2026SplitAvatar: One-shot Head Avatar with Autoregressive Gaussian Splittingcited by 0
  37. 2026Splatshot: 3D Face Avatar Generation from a Single Unconstrained Photocited by 0
  38. 2026Self-Learning Expression Deformations for Data-Efficient Gaussian Avatarscited by 0

50 most cited of 58 All 58 (JSON)