# Durian: Dual Reference Image-Guided Portrait Animation with Attribute Transfer

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.04434 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2509.04434/

## Key facts

- Cited by 1 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 60 of its 68 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 4 Sep 2025.

## Builds on (most cited first, 30 of 60)

- [Attention Is All You Need](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1706.03762/) (2017)
- [Learning Transferable Visual Models From Natural Language Supervision](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.00020/) (2021)
- [Denoising Diffusion Probabilistic Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2006.11239/) (2020)
- [High-Resolution Image Synthesis with Latent Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2112.10752/) (2021)
- [Emerging Properties in Self-Supervised Vision Transformers](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2104.14294/) (2021)
- [Adding Conditional Control to Text-to-Image Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2302.05543/) (2023)
- [Fully Convolutional Networks for Semantic Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1411.4038/) (2014)
- [SDXL: Improving Latent Diffusion Models for High-Resolution Image Synthesis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2307.01952/) (2023)
- [Analyzing and Improving the Image Quality of StyleGAN](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1912.04958/) (2019)
- [Quo Vadis, Action Recognition? A New Model and the Kinetics Dataset](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1705.07750/) (2017)
- [InstructPix2Pix: Learning to Follow Image Editing Instructions](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2211.09800/) (2022)
- [CLIPScore: A Reference-free Evaluation Metric for Image Captioning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2104.08718/) (2021)
- [Variational Inference with Normalizing Flows](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1505.05770/) (2015)
- [IP-Adapter: Text Compatible Image Prompt Adapter for Text-to-Image Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2308.06721/) (2023)
- [AnimateDiff: Animate Your Personalized Text-to-Image Diffusion Models without Specific Tuning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2307.04725/) (2023)
- [Encoding in Style: a StyleGAN Encoder for Image-to-Image Translation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2008.00951/) (2020)
- [Animate Anyone: Consistent and Controllable Image-to-Video Synthesis for Character Animation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.17117/) (2023)
- [Image2StyleGAN: How to Embed Images Into the StyleGAN Latent Space?](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1904.03189/) (2019)
- [Can Spatiotemporal 3D CNNs Retrace the History of 2D CNNs and ImageNet?](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1711.09577/) (2017)
- [Paint by Example: Exemplar-based Image Editing with Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2211.13227/) (2022)
- [One-Shot Free-View Neural Talking-Head Synthesis for Video Conferencing](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2011.15126/) (2020)
- [InstantID: Zero-shot Identity-Preserving Generation in Seconds](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2401.07519/) (2024)
- [AnyDoor: Zero-shot Object-level Image Customization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2307.09481/) (2023)
- [Video-to-Video Synthesis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1808.06601/) (2018)
- [Generative Visual Manipulation on the Natural Image Manifold](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1609.03552/) (2016)
- [Champ: Controllable and Consistent Human Image Animation with 3D Parametric Guidance](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.14781/) (2024)
- [EMOCA: Emotion Driven Monocular Face Capture and Animation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2204.11312/) (2022)
- [Sapiens: Foundation for Human Vision Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2408.12569/) (2024)
- [LivePortrait: Efficient Portrait Animation with Stitching and Retargeting Control](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.03168/) (2024)
- [NeRSemble: Multi-view Radiance Field Reconstruction of Human Heads](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.03027/) (2023)

## Built on by (most cited first, 1 of 1)

- [Vanast: Virtual Try-On with Human Image Animation via Synthetic Triplet Supervision](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2604.04934/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

We present Durian, the first method for generating portrait animation videos with cross-identity attribute transfer from one or more reference images to a target portrait. Training such models typically requires attribute pairs of the same individual, which are rarely available at scale. To address this challenge, we propose a self-reconstruction formulation that leverages ordinary portrait videos to learn attribute transfer without explicit paired data. Two frames from the same video act as a pseudo pair: one serves as an attribute reference and the other as an identity reference. To enable this self-reconstruction training, we introduce a Dual ReferenceNet that processes the two references separately and then fuses their features via spatial attention within a diffusion model. To make sure each reference functions as a specialized stream for either identity or attribute information, we apply complementary masking to the reference images. Together, these two components guide the model to reconstruct the original video, naturally learning cross-identity attribute transfer. To bridge the gap between self-reconstruction training and cross-identity inference, we introduce a mask expansion strategy and augmentation schemes, enabling robust transfer of attributes with varying spatial extent and misalignment. Durian achieves state-of-the-art performance on portrait animation with attribute transfer. Moreover, its dual reference design uniquely supports multi-attribute composition and smooth attribute interpolation within a single generation pass, enabling highly flexible and controllable synthesis.