# VASA-3D: Lifelike Audio-Driven Gaussian Head Avatars from a Single Image

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2512.14677 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2512.14677/

## Key facts

- Cited by 3 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 34 of its 45 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 16 Dec 2025.

## Builds on (most cited first, 30 of 34)

- [High-Resolution Image Synthesis with Latent Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2112.10752/) (2021)
- [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)
- [3D Gaussian Splatting for Real-Time Radiance Field Rendering](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2308.04079/) (2023)
- [Analyzing and Improving the Image Quality of StyleGAN](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1912.04958/) (2019)
- [DreamFusion: Text-to-3D using 2D Diffusion](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2209.14988/) (2022)
- [VoxCeleb2: Deep Speaker Recognition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1806.05622/) (2018)
- [Dynamic Neural Radiance Fields for Monocular 4D Facial Avatar Reconstruction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2012.03065/) (2020)
- [AD-NeRF: Audio Driven Neural Radiance Fields for Talking Head Synthesis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.11078/) (2021)
- [GaussianAvatars: Photorealistic Head Avatars with Rigged 3D Gaussians](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.02069/) (2023)
- [CelebV-HQ: A Large-Scale Video Facial Attributes Dataset](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2207.12393/) (2022)
- [I M Avatar: Implicit Morphable Head Avatars from Videos](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2112.07471/) (2021)
- [HeadNeRF: A Real-time NeRF-based Parametric Head Model](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2112.05637/) (2021)
- [Neural Head Avatars from Monocular RGB Videos](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2112.01554/) (2021)
- [GaussianAvatar: Towards Realistic Human Avatar Modeling from a Single Video via Animatable 3D Gaussians](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.02134/) (2023)
- [VASA-1: Lifelike Audio-Driven Talking Faces Generated in Real Time](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.10667/) (2024)
- [PointAvatar: Deformable Point-based Head Avatars from Videos](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2212.08377/) (2022)
- [Instant Volumetric Head Avatars](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2211.12499/) (2022)
- [GeneFace: Generalized and High-Fidelity Audio-Driven 3D Talking Face Synthesis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2301.13430/) (2023)
- [Reconstructing Personalized Semantic Facial NeRF Models From Monocular Video](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2210.06108/) (2022)
- [Realistic One-shot Mesh-based Head Avatars](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2206.08343/) (2022)
- [Real3D-Portrait: One-shot Realistic 3D Talking Portrait Synthesis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2401.08503/) (2024)
- [Generalizable and Animatable Gaussian Head Avatar](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.07971/) (2024)
- [GPAvatar: Generalizable and Precise Head Avatar from Image(s)](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2401.10215/) (2024)
- [AvatarMAV: Fast 3D Head Avatar Reconstruction Using Motion-Aware Neural Voxels](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2211.13206/) (2022)
- [Efficient Region-Aware Neural Radiance Fields for High-Fidelity Talking Portrait Synthesis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2307.09323/) (2023)
- [One-Shot High-Fidelity Talking-Head Synthesis with Deformable Neural Radiance Field](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2304.05097/) (2023)
- [Portrait4D-v2: Pseudo Multi-View Data Creates Better 4D Head Synthesizer](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.13570/) (2024)
- [TalkingGaussian: Structure-Persistent 3D Talking Head Synthesis via Gaussian Splatting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.15264/) (2024)
- [LAM: Large Avatar Model for One-shot Animatable Gaussian Head](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2502.17796/) (2025)

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

- [FlexAvatar: Learning Complete 3D Head Avatars with Partial Supervision](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2512.15599/) (2025)
- [Giving Faces Their Feelings Back: Explicit Emotion Control for Feedforward Single-Image 3D Head Avatars](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2604.14541/) (2026)
- [FFAvatar: Feed-Forward 4D Head Avatar Reconstruction from Sparse Portrait Images](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2606.30347/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

We propose VASA-3D, an audio-driven, single-shot 3D head avatar generator. This research tackles two major challenges: capturing the subtle expression details present in real human faces, and reconstructing an intricate 3D head avatar from a single portrait image. To accurately model expression details, VASA-3D leverages the motion latent of VASA-1, a method that yields exceptional realism and vividness in 2D talking heads. A critical element of our work is translating this motion latent to 3D, which is accomplished by devising a 3D head model that is conditioned on the motion latent. Customization of this model to a single image is achieved through an optimization framework that employs numerous video frames of the reference head synthesized from the input image. The optimization takes various training losses robust to artifacts and limited pose coverage in the generated training data. Our experiment shows that VASA-3D produces realistic 3D talking heads that cannot be achieved by prior art, and it supports the online generation of 512x512 free-viewpoint videos at up to 75 FPS, facilitating more immersive engagements with lifelike 3D avatars.