# SEGA: Drivable 3D Gaussian Head Avatar from a Single Image

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2504.14373 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2504.14373/

## Key facts

- Cited by 11 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 70 of its 92 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 19 Apr 2025.

## Builds on (most cited first, 30 of 70)

- [PyTorch: An Imperative Style, High-Performance Deep Learning Library](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1912.01703/) (2019)
- [Very Deep Convolutional Networks for Large-Scale Image Recognition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1409.1556/) (2014)
- [The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Deep Features as a Perceptual Metric](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1801.03924/) (2018)
- [DINOv2: Learning Robust Visual Features without Supervision](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2304.07193/) (2023)
- [3D Gaussian Splatting for Real-Time Radiance Field Rendering](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2308.04079/) (2023)
- [A Style-Based Generator Architecture for Generative Adversarial Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1812.04948/) (2018)
- [Perceptual Losses for Real-Time Style Transfer and Super-Resolution](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1603.08155/) (2016)
- [Accelerating 3D Deep Learning with PyTorch3D](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2007.08501/) (2020)
- [First Order Motion Model for Image Animation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2003.00196/) (2020)
- [How far are we from solving the 2D & 3D Face Alignment problem? (and a dataset of 230,000 3D facial landmarks)](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1703.07332/) (2017)
- [Modular Primitives for High-Performance Differentiable Rendering](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2011.03277/) (2020)
- [gsplat: An Open-Source Library for Gaussian Splatting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2409.06765/) (2024)
- [Mixture of Volumetric Primitives for Efficient Neural Rendering](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.01954/) (2021)
- [GaussianAvatars: Photorealistic Head Avatars with Rigged 3D Gaussians](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.02069/) (2023)
- [I M Avatar: Implicit Morphable Head Avatars from Videos](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2112.07471/) (2021)
- [Towards Robust Blind Face Restoration with Codebook Lookup Transformer](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2206.11253/) (2022)
- [PIRenderer: Controllable Portrait Image Generation via Semantic Neural Rendering](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2109.08379/) (2021)
- [NeRSemble: Multi-view Radiance Field Reconstruction of Human Heads](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.03027/) (2023)
- [X2Face: A network for controlling face generation by using images, audio, and pose codes](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1807.10550/) (2018)
- [PointAvatar: Deformable Point-based Head Avatars from Videos](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2212.08377/) (2022)
- [Depth-Aware Generative Adversarial Network for Talking Head Video Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2203.06605/) (2022)
- [Towards Metrical Reconstruction of Human Faces](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2204.06607/) (2022)
- [Deep Appearance Models for Face Rendering](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1808.00362/) (2018)
- [Instant Volumetric Head Avatars](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2211.12499/) (2022)
- [Reconstructing Personalized Semantic Facial NeRF Models From Monocular Video](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2210.06108/) (2022)
- [MODNet: Real-Time Trimap-Free Portrait Matting via Objective Decomposition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2011.11961/) (2020)
- [Pixel Codec Avatars](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2104.04638/) (2021)
- [Relightable Gaussian Codec Avatars](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.03704/) (2023)
- [RigNeRF: Fully Controllable Neural 3D Portraits](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2206.06481/) (2022)
- [Hallo3: Highly Dynamic and Realistic Portrait Image Animation with Video Diffusion Transformer](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2412.00733/) (2024)

## Built on by (most cited first, 11 of 11)

- [FlexAvatar: Learning Complete 3D Head Avatars with Partial Supervision](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2512.15599/) (2025)
- [Parametric Gaussian Human Model: Generalizable Prior for Efficient and Realistic Human Avatar Modeling](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2506.06645/) (2025)
- [Bringing Your Portrait to 3D Presence](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2511.22553/) (2025)
- [FlexAvatar: Flexible Large Reconstruction Model for Animatable Gaussian Head Avatars with Detailed Deformation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2512.17717/) (2025)
- [One-Shot Feed-Forward 360circ Animatable Avatar via Inpainted UV-Space Gaussian Modeling](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2601.12770/) (2026)
- [GeoDiff4D: Geometry-Aware Diffusion for 4D Head Avatar Reconstruction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2602.24161/) (2026)
- [Retrieval-Augmented Gaussian Avatars: Improving Expression Generalization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.08645/) (2026)
- [DipGuava: Disentangling Personalized Gaussian Features for 3D Head Avatars from Monocular Video](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.28003/) (2026)
- [SpatialAvatar-0: High-Quality 4D Head Avatar with Multi-Stage Reconstruction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2606.15659/) (2026)
- [Split and Drive: Dual-Axis Disentanglement for Real-Time Gaussian Head Avatars](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2607.28032/) (2026)
- [S-Avatar: Diffusion-Guided Gaussian Head Avatars from a Single Image](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2607.28164/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Creating photorealistic 3D head avatars from limited input has become increasingly important for applications in virtual reality, telepresence, and digital entertainment. While recent advances like neural rendering and 3D Gaussian splatting have enabled high-quality digital human avatar creation and animation, most methods rely on multiple images or multi-view inputs, limiting their practicality for real-world use. In this paper, we propose SEGA, a novel approach for Single-imagE-based 3D drivable Gaussian head Avatar creation that combines generalized prior models with a new hierarchical UV-space Gaussian Splatting framework. SEGA seamlessly combines priors derived from large-scale 2D datasets with 3D priors learned from multi-view, multi-expression, and multi-ID data, achieving robust generalization to unseen identities while ensuring 3D consistency across novel viewpoints and expressions. We further present a hierarchical UV-space Gaussian Splatting framework that leverages FLAME-based structural priors and employs a dual-branch architecture to disentangle dynamic and static facial components effectively. The dynamic branch encodes expression-driven fine details, while the static branch focuses on expression-invariant regions, enabling efficient parameter inference and precomputation. This design maximizes the utility of limited 3D data and achieves real-time performance for animation and rendering. Additionally, SEGA performs person-specific fine-tuning to further enhance the fidelity and realism of the generated avatars. Experiments show our method outperforms state-of-the-art approaches in generalization ability, identity preservation, and expression realism, advancing one-shot avatar creation for practical applications.