Semantic Latent Motion for Portrait Video Generation

Recent advancements in portrait video generation have been noteworthy. However, existing methods rely heavily on human priors and pre-trained generation models, which may introduce unrealistic motion and lead to inefficient inference. To address these challenges, we propose Semantic Latent Motion (SeMo), a compact and expressive motion representation. Leveraging this representation, our approach achieve both high-quality visual results and efficient inference. SeMo follows an effective three-step framework: Abstraction, Reasoning, and Generation. First, in the Abstraction step, we use a carefully designed Mask Motion Encoder to compress the subject's motion state into a compact and abstract latent motion (1D token). Second, in the Reasoning step, long-term modeling and efficient reasoning are performed in this latent space to generate motion sequences. Finally, in the Generation step, the motion dynamics serve as conditional information to guide the generation model in synthesizing realistic transitions from reference frames to target frames. Thanks to the compact and descriptive nature of Semantic Latent Motion, our method enables real-time video generation with highly realistic motion. User studies demonstrate that our approach surpasses state-of-the-art models with an 81% win rate in realism. Extensive experiments further highlight its strong compression capability, reconstruction quality, and generative potential. Moreover, its fully self-supervised nature suggests promising applications in broader video generation tasks.

MoEE: Mixture of Emotion Experts for Audio-Driven Portrait Animation

The generation of talking avatars has achieved significant advancements in precise audio synchronization. However, crafting lifelike talking head videos requires capturing a broad spectrum of emotions and subtle facial expressions. Current methods face fundamental challenges: a)the absence of frameworks for modeling single basic emotional expressions, which restricts the generation of complex emotions such as compound emotions; b)the lack of comprehensive datasets rich in human emotional expressions, which limits the potential of models. To address these challenges, we propose the following innovations: 1)the Mixture of Emotion Experts (MoEE) model, which decouples six fundamental emotions to enable the precise synthesis of both singular and compound emotional states; 2)the DH-FaceEmoVid-150 dataset, specifically curated to include six prevalent human emotional expressions as well as four types of compound emotions, thereby expanding the training potential of emotion-driven models. Furthermore, to enhance the flexibility of emotion control, we propose an emotion-to-latents module that leverages multimodal inputs, aligning diverse control signals-such as audio, text, and labels-to ensure more varied control inputs as well as the ability to control emotions using audio alone. Through extensive quantitative and qualitative evaluations, we demonstrate that the MoEE framework, in conjunction with the DH-FaceEmoVid-150 dataset, excels in generating complex emotional expressions and nuanced facial details, setting a new benchmark in the field. These datasets will be publicly released.