# DreamHead: Learning Spatial-Temporal Correspondence via Hierarchical Diffusion for Audio-driven Talking Head Synthesis

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2409.10281 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2409.10281/

## Key facts

- Cited by 3 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Placed in Audio, speech and music, one of 14 directions in Diffusion models.
- Builds on 33 of its 45 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 16 Sep 2024.

## Placed in

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

## Builds on (most cited first, 30 of 33)

- [High-Resolution Image Synthesis with Latent Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2112.10752/) (2021)
- [Generative Adversarial Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2203.00667/) (2022)
- [Taming Transformers for High-Resolution Image Synthesis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2012.09841/) (2020)
- [Imagen Video: High Definition Video Generation with Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2210.02303/) (2022)
- [RePaint: Inpainting using Denoising Diffusion Probabilistic Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2201.09865/) (2022)
- [First Order Motion Model for Image Animation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2003.00196/) (2020)
- [A Lip Sync Expert Is All You Need for Speech to Lip Generation In The Wild](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2008.10010/) (2020)
- [MediaPipe: A Framework for Building Perception Pipelines](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1906.08172/) (2019)
- [FateZero: Fusing Attentions for Zero-shot Text-based Video Editing](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.09535/) (2023)
- [Lumiere: A Space-Time Diffusion Model for Video Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2401.12945/) (2024)
- [SadTalker: Learning Realistic 3D Motion Coefficients for Stylized Audio-Driven Single Image Talking Face Animation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2211.12194/) (2022)
- [AD-NeRF: Audio Driven Neural Radiance Fields for Talking Head Synthesis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.11078/) (2021)
- [MakeItTalk: Speaker-Aware Talking-Head Animation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2004.12992/) (2020)
- [Pose-Controllable Talking Face Generation by Implicitly Modularized Audio-Visual Representation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2104.11116/) (2021)
- [Lip Reading Sentences in the Wild](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1611.05358/) (2016)
- [Towards Fast, Accurate and Stable 3D Dense Face Alignment](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2009.09960/) (2020)
- [Talking Face Generation by Adversarially Disentangled Audio-Visual Representation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1807.07860/) (2018)
- [Depth-Aware Generative Adversarial Network for Talking Head Video Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2203.06605/) (2022)
- [EAMM: One-Shot Emotional Talking Face via Audio-Based Emotion-Aware Motion Model](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2205.15278/) (2022)
- [Audio2Head: Audio-driven One-shot Talking-head Generation with Natural Head Motion](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2107.09293/) (2021)
- [LayoutDM: Discrete Diffusion Model for Controllable Layout Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.08137/) (2023)
- [Diffused Heads: Diffusion Models Beat GANs on Talking-Face Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2301.03396/) (2023)
- [GeneFace: Generalized and High-Fidelity Audio-Driven 3D Talking Face Synthesis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2301.13430/) (2023)
- [Progressive Disentangled Representation Learning for Fine-Grained Controllable Talking Head Synthesis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2211.14506/) (2022)
- [Implicit Identity Representation Conditioned Memory Compensation Network for Talking Head video Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2307.09906/) (2023)
- [SPACE: Speech-driven Portrait Animation with Controllable Expression](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2211.09809/) (2022)
- [DAE-Talker: High Fidelity Speech-Driven Talking Face Generation with Diffusion Autoencoder](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.17550/) (2023)
- [GeneFace++: Generalized and Stable Real-Time Audio-Driven 3D Talking Face Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.00787/) (2023)
- [Masked Lip-Sync Prediction by Audio-Visual Contextual Exploitation in Transformers](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2212.04970/) (2022)
- [MODA: Mapping-Once Audio-driven Portrait Animation with Dual Attentions](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2307.10008/) (2023)

## Built on by (most cited first, 3 of 3)

- [Free-viewpoint Human Animation with Pose-correlated Reference Selection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2412.17290/) (2024)
- [EmoGene: Audio-Driven Emotional 3D Talking-Head Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.17262/) (2024)
- [RealTalk: Realistic Emotion-Aware Lifelike Talking-Head Synthesis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2508.12163/) (2025)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Audio-driven talking head synthesis strives to generate lifelike video portraits from provided audio. The diffusion model, recognized for its superior quality and robust generalization, has been explored for this task. However, establishing a robust correspondence between temporal audio cues and corresponding spatial facial expressions with diffusion models remains a significant challenge in talking head generation. To bridge this gap, we present DreamHead, a hierarchical diffusion framework that learns spatial-temporal correspondences in talking head synthesis without compromising the model's intrinsic quality and adaptability.~DreamHead learns to predict dense facial landmarks from audios as intermediate signals to model the spatial and temporal correspondences.~Specifically, a first hierarchy of audio-to-landmark diffusion is first designed to predict temporally smooth and accurate landmark sequences given audio sequence signals. Then, a second hierarchy of landmark-to-image diffusion is further proposed to produce spatially consistent facial portrait videos, by modeling spatial correspondences between the dense facial landmark and appearance. Extensive experiments show that proposed DreamHead can effectively learn spatial-temporal consistency with the designed hierarchical diffusion and produce high-fidelity audio-driven talking head videos for multiple identities.