# GSwap: Realistic Head Swapping with Dynamic Neural Gaussian Field

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2603.23168 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.23168/

## Key facts

- No citing papers in the map yet (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 65 of its 94 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 24 Mar 2026.

## Builds on (most cited first, 30 of 65)

- [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)
- [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)
- [Adding Conditional Control to Text-to-Image Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2302.05543/) (2023)
- [DreamBooth: Fine Tuning Text-to-Image Diffusion Models for Subject-Driven Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2208.12242/) (2022)
- [InstructPix2Pix: Learning to Follow Image Editing Instructions](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2211.09800/) (2022)
- [Expressive Body Capture: 3D Hands, Face, and Body from a Single Image](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1904.05866/) (2019)
- [Efficient Geometry-aware 3D Generative Adversarial Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2112.07945/) (2021)
- [Face2Face: Real-time Face Capture and Reenactment of RGB Videos](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2007.14808/) (2020)
- [Dynamic Neural Radiance Fields for Monocular 4D Facial Avatar Reconstruction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2012.03065/) (2020)
- [TokenFlow: Consistent Diffusion Features for Consistent Video Editing](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2307.10373/) (2023)
- [InstantID: Zero-shot Identity-Preserving Generation in Seconds](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2401.07519/) (2024)
- [FSGAN: Subject Agnostic Face Swapping and Reenactment](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1908.05932/) (2019)
- [Rodin: A Generative Model for Sculpting 3D Digital Avatars Using Diffusion](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2212.06135/) (2022)
- [Champ: Controllable and Consistent Human Image Animation with 3D Parametric Guidance](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.14781/) (2024)
- [GaussianAvatars: Photorealistic Head Avatars with Rigged 3D Gaussians](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.02069/) (2023)
- [Rerender A Video: Zero-Shot Text-Guided Video-to-Video Translation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2306.07954/) (2023)
- [SimSwap: An Efficient Framework For High Fidelity Face Swapping](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2106.06340/) (2021)
- [Inpaint Anything: Segment Anything Meets Image Inpainting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2304.06790/) (2023)
- [HeadNeRF: A Real-time NeRF-based Parametric Head Model](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2112.05637/) (2021)
- [FaceShifter: Towards High Fidelity And Occlusion Aware Face Swapping](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1912.13457/) (2019)
- [GRAM: Generative Radiance Manifolds for 3D-Aware Image Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2112.08867/) (2021)
- [LivePortrait: Efficient Portrait Animation with Stitching and Retargeting Control](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.03168/) (2024)
- [General Facial Representation Learning in a Visual-Linguistic Manner](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2112.03109/) (2021)
- [PointAvatar: Deformable Point-based Head Avatars from Videos](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2212.08377/) (2022)
- [Generating Holistic 3D Human Motion from Speech](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2212.04420/) (2022)
- [Follow-Your-Emoji: Fine-Controllable and Expressive Freestyle Portrait Animation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.01900/) (2024)
- [Nonlinear 3D Face Morphable Model](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1804.03786/) (2018)

## Abstract (arXiv)

We present GSwap, a novel consistent and realistic video head-swapping system empowered by dynamic neural Gaussian portrait priors, which significantly advances the state of the art in face and head replacement. Unlike previous methods that rely primarily on 2D generative models or 3D Morphable Face Models (3DMM), our approach overcomes their inherent limitations, including poor 3D consistency, unnatural facial expressions, and restricted synthesis quality. Moreover, existing techniques struggle with full head-swapping tasks due to insufficient holistic head modeling and ineffective background blending, often resulting in visible artifacts and misalignments. To address these challenges, GSwap introduces an intrinsic 3D Gaussian feature field embedded within a full-body SMPL-X surface, effectively elevating 2D portrait videos into a dynamic neural Gaussian field. This innovation ensures high-fidelity, 3D-consistent portrait rendering while preserving natural head-torso relationships and seamless motion dynamics. To facilitate training, we adapt a pretrained 2D portrait generative model to the source head domain using only a few reference images, enabling efficient domain adaptation. Furthermore, we propose a neural re-rendering strategy that harmoniously integrates the synthesized foreground with the original background, eliminating blending artifacts and enhancing realism. Extensive experiments demonstrate that GSwap surpasses existing methods in multiple aspects, including visual quality, temporal coherence, identity preservation, and 3D consistency.