CaricatureGS GitHub

CaricatureGS:
Exaggerating 3D Gaussian Splatting Faces with Gaussian Curvature

Photorealistic facial exaggeration by coupling curvature-weighted mesh deformation with anisotropic 3D Gaussian Splatting. Real-time view synthesis, controllable exaggeration, and faithful identity preservation.

Paper (PDF) Code BibTeX
  • Authors: Matmon Eldad, Bracha Amit, Rotstein Noam, Kimmel Ron
  • Venue: 3DV 2026 (submitted)
  • Codebase: Built atop SurFHead (with extensive additions)
CaricatureGS teaser

Abstract

We present CaricatureGS, a curvature-aware 3D Gaussian Splatting framework for photorealistic facial caricature. Our method couples a curvature-weighted Poisson deformation on a fitted FLAME mesh with anisotropic 3D Gaussians. We introduce a local affine transfer (LAT) to synthesize pseudo ground-truth for exaggerated views and a joint optimization training scheme across original and caricatured frames. The result is a single 3DGS model that renders identity-faithful faces under controllable exaggeration and novel views at interactive rates.

Method & Pipeline

Pipeline diagram
  1. 1

    Fit FLAME & compute curvature

    Given an input videos we fit per-frame FLAME mesh and estimate Gaussian curvature K on it. We exaggerate the shape geometry by solving a Poisson equation weighted by K.

    FLAME Curvature K
  2. 2

    Curvature-weighted deformation

    Local Affine Transfer (LAT) warps original frames to the exaggerated projections, yielding supervision for the Gaussians optimization.

    self-supervision
  3. 3

    LAT pseudo-ground-truth

    Jointly optimize one set of anisotropic 3D Gaussians on original + caricatured frames for consistent geometry & radiance. Alternating between GT and GT* images allows for smooth interpolation between representations.

Video Gallery

Ours (γ = 0 → 0.20) SurFHead
Ours (γ = 0 → 0.20) SurFHead
Ours (γ = 0 → 0.20) SurFHead
Semantic editing — nose
Semantic editing — nose
Semantic editing — nose

Qualitative Results

SurfHead
Ours
Ours (γ = 0 → 0.20) SurfHead
Subjects
Ours
SurfHead
Ours SurfHead

Code, Data & Models

BibTeX

@article{Matmon2026CaricatureGS,
  title   = {CaricatureGS: Gaussian-Curvature-Guided 3D Gaussian Splatting for Facial Caricature},
  author  = {Matmon Eldad , Bracha Amit, Rotstein Noam, Kimmel Ron},
  conference = {3DV},
  year    = {2026},
  note    = {submitted}
}