# ICo3D: An Interactive Conversational 3D Virtual Human

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2601.13148 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2601.13148/

## Key facts

- Cited by 1 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 67 of its 87 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 19 Jan 2026.

## Builds on (most cited first, 30 of 67)

- [Attention Is All You Need](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1706.03762/) (2017)
- [BERT: Pre-training of Deep Bidirectional Transformers for Language Understanding](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1810.04805/) (2018)
- [GPT-4 Technical Report](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.08774/) (2023)
- [Training language models to follow instructions with human feedback](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2203.02155/) (2022)
- [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)
- [Instant Neural Graphics Primitives with a Multiresolution Hash Encoding](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2201.05989/) (2022)
- [Qwen Technical Report](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2309.16609/) (2023)
- [Perceptual Losses for Real-Time Style Transfer and Super-Resolution](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1603.08155/) (2016)
- [A Survey of Large Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.18223/) (2023)
- [RAFT: Recurrent All-Pairs Field Transforms for Optical Flow](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2003.12039/) (2020)
- [NeuS: Learning Neural Implicit Surfaces by Volume Rendering for Multi-view Reconstruction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2106.10689/) (2021)
- [Expressive Body Capture: 3D Hands, Face, and Body from a Single Image](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1904.05866/) (2019)
- [D-NeRF: Neural Radiance Fields for Dynamic Scenes](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2011.13961/) (2020)
- [AWQ: Activation-aware Weight Quantization for LLM Compression and Acceleration](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2306.00978/) (2023)
- [A Survey on Evaluation of Large Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2307.03109/) (2023)
- [Nerfies: Deformable Neural Radiance Fields](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2011.12948/) (2020)
- [4D Gaussian Splatting for Real-Time Dynamic Scene Rendering](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2310.08528/) (2023)
- [PlenOctrees for Real-time Rendering of Neural Radiance Fields](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.14024/) (2021)
- [Deformable 3D Gaussians for High-Fidelity Monocular Dynamic Scene Reconstruction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2309.13101/) (2023)
- [Neural Scene Flow Fields for Space-Time View Synthesis of Dynamic Scenes](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2011.13084/) (2020)
- [K-Planes: Explicit Radiance Fields in Space, Time, and Appearance](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2301.10241/) (2023)
- [Dynamic 3D Gaussians: Tracking by Persistent Dynamic View Synthesis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2308.09713/) (2023)
- [Face2Face: Real-time Face Capture and Reenactment of RGB Videos](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2007.14808/) (2020)
- [PIFuHD: Multi-Level Pixel-Aligned Implicit Function for High-Resolution 3D Human Digitization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2004.00452/) (2020)
- [Real-time Photorealistic Dynamic Scene Representation and Rendering with 4D Gaussian Splatting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2310.10642/) (2023)
- [Neural Geometric Level of Detail: Real-time Rendering with Implicit 3D Shapes](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2101.10994/) (2021)
- [SC-GS: Sparse-Controlled Gaussian Splatting for Editable Dynamic Scenes](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.14937/) (2023)
- [Spacetime Gaussian Feature Splatting for Real-Time Dynamic View Synthesis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.16812/) (2023)
- [Mixture of Volumetric Primitives for Efficient Neural Rendering](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.01954/) (2021)

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

- [Face Anything: 4D Face Reconstruction from Any Image Sequence](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2604.19702/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

This work presents Interactive Conversational 3D Virtual Human (ICo3D), a method for generating an interactive, conversational, and photorealistic 3D human avatar. Based on multi-view captures of a subject, we create an animatable 3D face model and a dynamic 3D body model, both rendered by splatting Gaussian primitives. Once merged together, they represent a lifelike virtual human avatar suitable for real-time user interactions. We equip our avatar with an LLM for conversational ability. During conversation, the audio speech of the avatar is used as a driving signal to animate the face model, enabling precise synchronization. We describe improvements to our dynamic Gaussian models that enhance photorealism: SWinGS++ for body reconstruction and HeadGaS++ for face reconstruction, and provide as well a solution to merge the separate face and body models without artifacts. We also present a demo of the complete system, showcasing several use cases of real-time conversation with the 3D avatar. Our approach offers a fully integrated virtual avatar experience, supporting both oral and written form interactions in immersive environments. ICo3D is applicable to a wide range of fields, including gaming, virtual assistance, and personalized education, among others. Project page: https://ico3d.github.io/