# 3D Gaussian Blendshapes for Head Avatar Animation

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2404.19398 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.19398/

## Key facts

- Cited by 58 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 19 of its 45 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 30 Apr 2024.

## Builds on (most cited first, 19 of 19)

- [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)
- [Instant Neural Graphics Primitives with a Multiresolution Hash Encoding](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2201.05989/) (2022)
- [Learning an Animatable Detailed 3D Face Model from In-The-Wild Images](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2012.04012/) (2020)
- [Dynamic Neural Radiance Fields for Monocular 4D Facial Avatar Reconstruction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2012.03065/) (2020)
- [Mixture of Volumetric Primitives for Efficient Neural Rendering](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.01954/) (2021)
- [Towards Metrical Reconstruction of Human Faces](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2204.06607/) (2022)
- [Nonlinear 3D Face Morphable Model](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1804.03786/) (2018)
- [SelfRecon: Self Reconstruction Your Digital Avatar from Monocular Video](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2201.12792/) (2022)
- [Reconstructing Personalized Semantic Facial NeRF Models From Monocular Video](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2210.06108/) (2022)
- [i3DMM: Deep Implicit 3D Morphable Model of Human Heads](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2011.14143/) (2020)
- [MonoGaussianAvatar: Monocular Gaussian Point-based Head Avatar](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.04558/) (2023)
- [AvatarMAV: Fast 3D Head Avatar Reconstruction Using Motion-Aware Neural Voxels](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2211.13206/) (2022)
- [Towards a complete 3D morphable model of the human head](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1911.08008/) (2019)
- [GaussianHead: High-fidelity Head Avatars with Learnable Gaussian Derivation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.01632/) (2023)
- [Surface-Aligned Neural Radiance Fields for Controllable 3D Human Synthesis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2201.01683/) (2022)
- [Riggable 3D Face Reconstruction via In-Network Optimization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2104.03493/) (2021)
- [Personalized Face Modeling for Improved Face Reconstruction and Motion Retargeting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2007.06759/) (2020)

## Built on by (most cited first, 30 of 58)

- [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)
- [FATE: Full-head Gaussian Avatar with Textural Editing from Monocular Video](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2411.15604/) (2024)
- [RGBAvatar: Reduced Gaussian Blendshapes for Online Modeling of Head Avatars](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.12886/) (2025)
- [HRAvatar: High-Quality and Relightable Gaussian Head Avatar](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.08224/) (2025)
- [Gaussian Eigen Models for Human Heads](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.04545/) (2024)
- [3D Gaussian Head Avatars with Expressive Dynamic Appearances by Compact Tensorial Representations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2504.14967/) (2025)
- [Balanced 3DGS: Gaussian-wise Parallelism Rendering with Fine-Grained Tiling](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2412.17378/) (2024)
- [Real-time High-fidelity Gaussian Human Avatars with Position-based Interpolation of Spatially Distributed MLPs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2504.12909/) (2025)
- [SqueezeMe: Mobile-Ready Distillation of Gaussian Full-Body Avatars](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2412.15171/) (2024)
- [SEGA: Drivable 3D Gaussian Head Avatar from a Single Image](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2504.14373/) (2025)
- [SOAP: Style-Omniscient Animatable Portraits](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.05022/) (2025)
- [Gaussian Deja-vu: Creating Controllable 3D Gaussian Head-Avatars with Enhanced Generalization and Personalization Abilities](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2409.16147/) (2024)
- [FastAvatar: Instant 3D Gaussian Splatting for Faces from Single Unconstrained Poses](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2508.18389/) (2025)
- [PanoLAM: Large Avatar Model for Gaussian Full-Head Synthesis from One-shot Unposed Image](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2509.07552/) (2025)
- [Audio-Driven Universal Gaussian Head Avatars](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2509.18924/) (2025)
- [GauRast: Enhancing GPU Triangle Rasterizers to Accelerate 3D Gaussian Splatting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.16681/) (2025)
- [BecomingLit: Relightable Gaussian Avatars with Hybrid Neural Shading](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2506.06271/) (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)
- [FaceCraft4D: Animated 3D Facial Avatar Generation from a Single Image](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2504.15179/) (2025)
- [STAvatar: Soft Binding and Temporal Density Control for Monocular 3D Head Avatars Reconstruction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2511.19854/) (2025)
- [FastGHA: Generalized Few-Shot 3D Gaussian Head Avatars with Real-Time Animation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2601.13837/) (2026)
- [DynaSplat: Dynamic-Static Gaussian Splatting with Hierarchical Motion Decomposition for Scene Reconstruction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2506.09836/) (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)
- [AGORA: Adversarial Generation Of Real-time Animatable 3D Gaussian Head Avatars](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2512.06438/) (2025)
- [EVolSplat4D: Efficient Volume-based Gaussian Splatting for 4D Urban Scene Synthesis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2601.15951/) (2026)
- [Snapmoji: Instant Generation of Animatable Dual-Stylized Avatars](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.11978/) (2025)
- [ToonifyGB: StyleGAN-based Gaussian Blendshapes for 3D Stylized Head Avatars](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.10072/) (2025)
- [TexAvatars : Hybrid Texel-3D Representations for Stable Rigging of Photorealistic Gaussian Head Avatars](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2512.21099/) (2025)

## 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.