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

Jiahao Luo; Hao Zhang; Jianqi Chen; Yijie He; Jiaxu Zou; Michael Vasilkovsky; Sergei Korolev; Sergey Tulyakov; Chaoyang Wang; Peter Wonka; James Davis; Jian Wang

arXiv · 2607.12206

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

Jiahao Luo·Hao Zhang·Jianqi Chen·Yijie He·Jiaxu Zou·Michael Vasilkovsky·Sergei Korolev·Sergey Tulyakov·Chaoyang Wang·Peter Wonka·James Davis·Jian Wang

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Abstract

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/.

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BibTeX RIS

Jiahao Luo, Hao Zhang, Jianqi Chen, Yijie He, Jiaxu Zou, Michael Vasilkovsky, Sergei Korolev, Sergey Tulyakov, Chaoyang Wang, Peter Wonka, James Davis, Jian Wang. 2026-07-13. RegHead: Non-Humanoid Head Blendshapes via Feed-Forward Registration. https://arxiv.org/abs/2607.12206

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