mlsanityData to 14 Oct 2026

Controlling Avatar Diffusion with Learnable Gaussian Embedding

arXiv 2503.15809 ↗First posted 20 Mar 2025cs.GR cs.CVcited by 3

On the map: Diffusion models → 3D, point cloud and scene generation

Abstract (arXiv)

Recent advances in diffusion models have made significant progress in digital human generation. However, most existing models still struggle to maintain 3D consistency, temporal coherence, and motion accuracy. A key reason for these shortcomings is the limited representation ability of commonly used control signals(e.g., landmarks, depth maps, etc.). In addition, the lack of diversity in identity and pose variations in public datasets further hinders progress in this area. In this paper, we analyze the shortcomings of current control signals and introduce a novel control signal representation that is optimizable, dense, expressive, and 3D consistent. Our method embeds a learnable neural Gaussian onto a parametric head surface, which greatly enhances the consistency and expressiveness of diffusion-based head models. Regarding the dataset, we synthesize a large-scale dataset with multiple poses and identities. In addition, we use real/synthetic labels to effectively distinguish real and synthetic data, minimizing the impact of imperfections in synthetic data on the generated head images. Extensive experiments show that our model outperforms existing methods in terms of realism, expressiveness, and 3D consistency. Our code, synthetic datasets, and pre-trained models will be released in our project page: https://ustc3dv.github.io/Learn2Control/

Key facts. Cited by 3 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026). Placed in 3D, point cloud and scene generation, one of 14 directions in Diffusion models. Builds on 85 of its 101 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 20 Mar 2025.

Builds on

85 of 101 references.

Closest ancestors · 8

Same direction, newest first

  1. 2025GAS: Generative Avatar Synthesis from a Single Image10 Feb
  2. 2024GAF: Gaussian Avatar Reconstruction from Monocular Videos via Multi-view Diffusion13 Dec
  3. 2024MagicMan: Generative Novel View Synthesis of Humans with 3D-Aware Diffusion and Iterative Refinement26 Aug
  4. 2024RodinHD: High-Fidelity 3D Avatar Generation with Diffusion Models9 Jul
  5. 2024Morphable Diffusion: 3D-Consistent Diffusion for Single-image Avatar Creation9 Jan
  6. 2023DiffPortrait3D: Controllable Diffusion for Zero-Shot Portrait View Synthesis20 Dec
  7. 2023AvatarStudio: Text-driven Editing of 3D Dynamic Human Head Avatars1 Jun
  8. 2022Rodin: A Generative Model for Sculpting 3D Digital Avatars Using Diffusion12 Dec

Other references · 77

  1. 2017Attention Is All You Needcited by 60,361
  2. 2020Denoising Diffusion Probabilistic Modelscited by 21,076
  3. 2021High-Resolution Image Synthesis with Latent Diffusion Modelscited by 18,863
  4. 2018The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Deep Features as a Perceptual Metriccited by 11,177
  5. 20233D Gaussian Splatting for Real-Time Radiance Field Renderingcited by 6,226
  6. 2022InstructPix2Pix: Learning to Follow Image Editing Instructionscited by 2,611
  7. 2020First Order Motion Model for Image Animationcited by 704
  8. 2023Animate Anyone: Consistent and Controllable Image-to-Video Synthesis for Character Animationcited by 688
  9. 2020One-Shot Free-View Neural Talking-Head Synthesis for Video Conferencingcited by 444
  10. 2024InstantID: Zero-shot Identity-Preserving Generation in Secondscited by 436
  11. 2022SadTalker: Learning Realistic 3D Motion Coefficients for Stylized Audio-Driven Single Image Talking Face Animationcited by 382
  12. 2023MagicAnimate: Temporally Consistent Human Image Animation using Diffusion Modelcited by 330
38 more
  1. 2021Pose-Controllable Talking Face Generation by Implicitly Modularized Audio-Visual Representationcited by 288
  2. 2019Few-Shot Adversarial Learning of Realistic Neural Talking Head Modelscited by 284
  3. 2024Champ: Controllable and Consistent Human Image Animation with 3D Parametric Guidancecited by 272
  4. 2020StyleRig: Rigging StyleGAN for 3D Control over Portrait Imagescited by 268
  5. 2021Motion Representations for Articulated Animationcited by 255
  6. 2021HeadNeRF: A Real-time NeRF-based Parametric Head Modelcited by 228
  7. 2022Thin-Plate Spline Motion Model for Image Animationcited by 210
  8. 2021PIRenderer: Controllable Portrait Image Generation via Semantic Neural Renderingcited by 203
  9. 2023NeRSemble: Multi-view Radiance Field Reconstruction of Human Headscited by 194
  10. 2022Depth-Aware Generative Adversarial Network for Talking Head Video Generationcited by 178
  11. 2022VFHQ: A High-Quality Dataset and Benchmark for Video Face Super-Resolutioncited by 176
  12. 2024Follow-Your-Emoji: Fine-Controllable and Expressive Freestyle Portrait Animationcited by 174
  13. 2022StyleHEAT: One-Shot High-Resolution Editable Talking Face Generation via Pre-trained StyleGANcited by 169
  14. 2018Nonlinear 3D Face Morphable Modelcited by 157
  15. 2022MegaPortraits: One-shot Megapixel Neural Head Avatarscited by 131
  16. 2022Next3D: Generative Neural Texture Rasterization for 3D-Aware Head Avatarscited by 124
  17. 2022Realistic One-shot Mesh-based Head Avatarscited by 119
  18. 2023MagicPose: Realistic Human Poses and Facial Expressions Retargeting with Identity-aware Diffusioncited by 117
  19. 2020i3DMM: Deep Implicit 3D Morphable Model of Human Headscited by 109
  20. 2023FlashAvatar: High-fidelity Head Avatar with Efficient Gaussian Embeddingcited by 108
  21. 2020Neural Head Reenactment with Latent Pose Descriptorscited by 106
  22. 2024Arc2Face: A Foundation Model for ID-Consistent Human Facescited by 101
  23. 2024Real3D-Portrait: One-shot Realistic 3D Talking Portrait Synthesiscited by 97
  24. 2024Generalizable and Animatable Gaussian Head Avatarcited by 97
  25. 2021MoFaNeRF: Morphable Facial Neural Radiance Fieldcited by 94
  26. 2022Progressive Disentangled Representation Learning for Fine-Grained Controllable Talking Head Synthesiscited by 93
  27. 2024X-Portrait: Expressive Portrait Animation with Hierarchical Motion Attentioncited by 91
  28. 2022Multiface: A Dataset for Neural Face Renderingcited by 87
  29. 2024SMIRK: 3D Facial Expressions through Analysis-by-Neural-Synthesiscited by 84
  30. 2023DreamFace: Progressive Generation of Animatable 3D Faces under Text Guidancecited by 80
  31. 2024GPAvatar: Generalizable and Precise Head Avatar from Image(s)cited by 74
  32. 2022Learning Neural Parametric Head Modelscited by 73
  33. 2023One-Shot High-Fidelity Talking-Head Synthesis with Deformable Neural Radiance Fieldcited by 68
  34. 2023OTAvatar: One-shot Talking Face Avatar with Controllable Tri-plane Renderingcited by 67
  35. 2024Face Adapter for Pre-Trained Diffusion Models with Fine-Grained ID and Attribute Controlcited by 67
  36. 2024EMOPortraits: Emotion-enhanced Multimodal One-shot Head Avatarscited by 66
  37. 2022ImFace: A Nonlinear 3D Morphable Face Model with Implicit Neural Representationscited by 64
  38. 2024Portrait4D-v2: Pseudo Multi-View Data Creates Better 4D Head Synthesizercited by 64

50 most cited of 77 All 77 (JSON)

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Cited by year (2026 to 14 Oct)

Citing papers per year: 2025: 2; 2026: 1.

3 papers.

Similar, not cited

Close in wording, no citation either way

  1. 2024Instant 3D Human Avatar Generation using Image Diffusion Models
  2. 2024Human-3Diffusion: Realistic Avatar Creation via Explicit 3D Consistent Diffusion Models
  3. 2024VLOGGER: Multimodal Diffusion for Embodied Avatar Synthesis
  4. 2025Hyper Diffusion Avatars: Dynamic Human Avatar Generation using Network Weight Space Diffusion
  5. 2025FLAP: Fully-controllable Audio-driven Portrait Video Generation through 3D head conditioned diffusion model
  6. 2026GeoDiff4D: Geometry-Aware Diffusion for 4D Head Avatar Reconstruction
  7. 2024E3Gen: Efficient, Expressive and Editable Avatars Generation
  8. 2025Zero-1-to-A: Zero-Shot One Image to Animatable Head Avatars Using Video Diffusion