# BEACON: Behavior and Appearance Control for Subject-Specific Video Generation

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2609.13264 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2609.13264/

## Key facts

- No citing papers in the map yet (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 17 of its 23 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 7 Sep 2026.

## Builds on (most cited first, 17 of 17)

- [VBench: Comprehensive Benchmark Suite for Video Generative Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.17982/) (2023)
- [HunyuanVideo: A Systematic Framework For Large Video Generative Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2412.03603/) (2024)
- [CogVideo: Large-scale Pretraining for Text-to-Video Generation via Transformers](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2205.15868/) (2022)
- [Accurate 3D Face Reconstruction with Weakly-Supervised Learning: From Single Image to Image Set](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1903.08527/) (2019)
- [VACE: All-in-One Video Creation and Editing](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.07598/) (2025)
- [Open-Sora Plan: Open-Source Large Video Generation Model](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2412.00131/) (2024)
- [EMO: Emote Portrait Alive -- Generating Expressive Portrait Videos with Audio2Video Diffusion Model under Weak Conditions](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2402.17485/) (2024)
- [EchoMimic: Lifelike Audio-Driven Portrait Animations through Editable Landmark Conditions](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.08136/) (2024)
- [Identity-Preserving Text-to-Video Generation by Frequency Decomposition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2411.17440/) (2024)
- [Phantom: Subject-consistent video generation via cross-modal alignment](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2502.11079/) (2025)
- [ID-Animator: Zero-Shot Identity-Preserving Human Video Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.15275/) (2024)
- [OpenS2V-Nexus: A Detailed Benchmark and Million-Scale Dataset for Subject-to-Video Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.20292/) (2025)
- [TalkingGaussian: Structure-Persistent 3D Talking Head Synthesis via Gaussian Splatting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.15264/) (2024)
- [HunyuanPortrait: Implicit Condition Control for Enhanced Portrait Animation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.18860/) (2025)
- [Stand-In: A Lightweight and Plug-and-Play Identity Control for Video Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2508.07901/) (2025)
- [Slot-ID: Identity-Preserving Video Generation from Reference Videos via Slot-Based Temporal Identity Encoding](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2601.01352/) (2026)
- [Weakly Supervised Learning for Facial Affective Behavior Analysis : A Review](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2101.09858/) (2021)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Generating human-centric videos that preserve both visual identity and person-specific expressive behavior remains a fundamental challenge. In addition to reproducing appearance, a model must replicate the facial behaviors that characterize how a subject expresses emotion over time. However, most state-of-the-art methods condition generation on a single reference image, which contains no information about these temporal dynamics. As a result, they tend to preserve the subject's visual identity but often produce expressions with limited variation and weak subject specificity. To mitigate this issue, we introduce BEACON, a lightweight framework for person-specific video generation that produces more expressive videos by disentangling visual identity from expressive behavior. BEACON conditions generation on two complementary signals: a reference image encoding the identity and a reference video capturing subject-specific facial dynamics. By conditioning on these complementary signals, BEACON generates videos that better preserve both the subject's appearance and characteristic facial dynamics, while also supporting identity-expression transfer. Our experiments on the MEAD and RAVDESS datasets show that by fine-tuning on approximately 2,000 pairs and updating about 1% of the pretrained Wan video diffusion model, BEACON improves facial expressivity over state-of-the-art video generation methods while maintaining competitive identity preservation.