# RegHead: Non-Humanoid Head Blendshapes via Feed-Forward Registration

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2607.12206 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2607.12206/

## Key facts

- No citing papers in the map yet (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 41 of its 52 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 13 Jul 2026.

## Builds on (most cited first, 30 of 41)

- [3D Gaussian Splatting for Real-Time Radiance Field Rendering](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2308.04079/) (2023)
- [InstructPix2Pix: Learning to Follow Image Editing Instructions](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2211.09800/) (2022)
- [CogVideoX: Text-to-Video Diffusion Models with An Expert Transformer](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2408.06072/) (2024)
- [Objaverse-XL: A Universe of 10M+ 3D Objects](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2307.05663/) (2023)
- [Structured 3D Latents for Scalable and Versatile 3D Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2412.01506/) (2024)
- [3DShape2VecSet: A 3D Shape Representation for Neural Fields and Generative Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2301.11445/) (2023)
- [OmniObject3D: Large-Vocabulary 3D Object Dataset for Realistic Perception, Reconstruction and Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2301.07525/) (2023)
- [Video-P2P: Video Editing with Cross-attention Control](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.04761/) (2023)
- [GaussianAvatars: Photorealistic Head Avatars with Rigged 3D Gaussians](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.02069/) (2023)
- [Native and Compact Structured Latents for 3D Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2512.14692/) (2025)
- [Hunyuan3D 2.1: From Images to High-Fidelity 3D Assets with Production-Ready PBR Material](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2506.15442/) (2025)
- [L4GM: Large 4D Gaussian Reconstruction Model](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.10324/) (2024)
- [SV4D: Dynamic 3D Content Generation with Multi-Frame and Multi-View Consistency](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.17470/) (2024)
- [Consistent4D: Consistent 360deg Dynamic Object Generation from Monocular Video](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.02848/) (2023)
- [4DComplete: Non-Rigid Motion Estimation Beyond the Observable Surface](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2105.01905/) (2021)
- [FlashAvatar: High-fidelity Head Avatar with Efficient Gaussian Embedding](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.02214/) (2023)
- [STAG4D: Spatial-Temporal Anchored Generative 4D Gaussians](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.14939/) (2024)
- [Diffusion4D: Fast Spatial-temporal Consistent 4D Generation via Video Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2405.16645/) (2024)
- [Generalizable and Animatable Gaussian Head Avatar](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.07971/) (2024)
- [DreamMesh4D: Video-to-4D Generation with Sparse-Controlled Gaussian-Mesh Hybrid Representation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.06756/) (2024)
- [4DGT: Learning a 4D Gaussian Transformer Using Real-World Monocular Videos](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2506.08015/) (2025)
- [SV4D 2.0: Enhancing Spatio-Temporal Consistency in Multi-View Video Diffusion for High-Quality 4D Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.16396/) (2025)
- [RigAnything: Template-Free Autoregressive Rigging for Diverse 3D Assets](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2502.09615/) (2025)
- [One Model to Rig Them All: Diverse Skeleton Rigging with UniRig](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2504.12451/) (2025)
- [MagicArticulate: Make Your 3D Models Articulation-Ready](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2502.12135/) (2025)
- [LAM: Large Avatar Model for One-shot Animatable Gaussian Head](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2502.17796/) (2025)
- [V2M4: 4D Mesh Animation Reconstruction from a Single Monocular Video](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.09631/) (2025)
- [TextToon: Real-Time Text Toonify Head Avatar from Single Video](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.07160/) (2024)
- [ActionMesh: Animated 3D Mesh Generation with Temporal 3D Diffusion](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2601.16148/) (2026)
- [Motion 3-to-4: 3D Motion Reconstruction for 4D Synthesis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2601.14253/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

We present RegHead, a framework for constructing semantic blendshape sets for animatable non-humanoid head avatars. With a fixed expression vocabulary, semantic blendshapes provide a low-dimensional and interpretable animation interface and support cross-identity retargeting. Building such blendshape sets remains expensive because (i) expression-consistent supervision is scarce, (ii) generated 4D assets typically lack correspondence, and (iii) facial motion is highly localized. We propose (1) a large-scale dataset of non-humanoid identities paired with a shared expression vocabulary, obtained by expanding a small artist-rigged library via fine-tuned image editing; (2) a dense stochastic anchor motion representation tailored to localized facial deformations; and (3) a fast feed-forward registration model that converts unregistered expression meshes into a corresponded blendshape basis by predicting anchor-based deformations from the neutral shape. Experiments show that our approach produces higher-fidelity expression meshes than baselines, while running orders of magnitude faster than optimization. We further demonstrate real-time retargeting from human face tracking signals to non-humanoid characters, capturing both head pose and localized facial motions. Our project page is available at https://snap-research.github.io/RegHead/.