CaricatureGS: Exaggerating 3D Gaussian Splatting Faces With Gaussian Curvature

TL;DR

This paper introduces CaricatureGS, a novel framework that combines Gaussian curvature-based surface exaggeration with 3D Gaussian Splatting to produce photorealistic, controllable 3D caricature faces with real-time deformation capabilities.

Contribution

It presents a new method integrating intrinsic curvature exaggeration with 3D Gaussian Splatting, enabling high-fidelity, controllable caricature face avatars with efficient real-time deformation.

Findings

Outperforms prior methods in realism and control.

Supports continuous caricature exaggeration.

Enables real-time avatar deformation.

Abstract

A photorealistic and controllable 3D caricaturization framework for faces is introduced. We start with an intrinsic Gaussian curvature-based surface exaggeration technique, which, when coupled with texture, tends to produce over-smoothed renders. To address this, we resort to 3D Gaussian Splatting (3DGS), which has recently been shown to produce realistic free-viewpoint avatars. Given a multiview sequence, we extract a FLAME mesh, solve a curvature-weighted Poisson equation, and obtain its exaggerated form. However, directly deforming the Gaussians yields poor results, necessitating the synthesis of pseudo-ground-truth caricature images by warping each frame to its exaggerated 2D representation using local affine transformations. We then devise a training scheme that alternates real and synthesized supervision, enabling a single Gaussian collection to represent both natural and exaggerated avatars. This scheme improves fidelity, supports local edits, and allows continuous control over the intensity of the caricature. In order to achieve real-time deformations, an efficient interpolation between the original and exaggerated surfaces is introduced. We further analyze and show that it has a bounded deviation from closed-form solutions. In both quantitative and qualitative evaluations, our results outperform prior work, delivering photorealistic, geometry-controlled caricature avatars.