D-Rex : Diffusion Rendering for Relightable Expressive Avatars

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Teufel, Timo, Zhou, Xilong, Iqbal, Umar, Kautz, Jan, Habermann, Marc, Golyanik, Vladislav, Theobalt, Christian
Format: Preprint
Published: 2026
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author Teufel, Timo
Zhou, Xilong
Iqbal, Umar
Kautz, Jan
Habermann, Marc
Golyanik, Vladislav
Theobalt, Christian
author_facet Teufel, Timo
Zhou, Xilong
Iqbal, Umar
Kautz, Jan
Habermann, Marc
Golyanik, Vladislav
Theobalt, Christian
contents We present D-Rex, a person-specific framework for photorealistic, relightable, expressive, and animatable full-body human avatars with free-viewpoint rendering. Existing methods for relightable full-body avatars rely on explicit 3D intrinsic decomposition with analytic reflectance models, which require accurate geometry registration and careful optimization to capture realistic light transport effects. This tight coupling of relighting with avatar modeling has hindered expressiveness: to our knowledge, no existing method demonstrates strong facial animation alongside relighting, limiting applicability in telepresence, gaming, and virtual production. We propose to decouple relighting entirely from avatar modeling by treating it as an image-space post-process: a learned translation from flat-lit, albedo-like renderings to a target HDR illumination. To this end, we leverage the strong generative prior of a pre-trained video diffusion relighting model, fine-tuned via LoRA on paired flat-lit and relit frames captured in a light stage. The flat-lit driving frames are produced by an independent expressive full-body avatar framework trained under white-light conditions, requiring no modification to support relighting, making D-Rex directly applicable to any white-light avatar system. We demonstrate that D-Rex enables view- and temporally consistent relighting while faithfully preserving expressive motion and fine-grained facial detail, outperforming physically-based relightable avatar baselines. Project page is https://vcai.mpi-inf.mpg.de/projects/DRex/
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2604_27871
institution arXiv
publishDate 2026
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle D-Rex : Diffusion Rendering for Relightable Expressive Avatars
Teufel, Timo
Zhou, Xilong
Iqbal, Umar
Kautz, Jan
Habermann, Marc
Golyanik, Vladislav
Theobalt, Christian
Graphics
We present D-Rex, a person-specific framework for photorealistic, relightable, expressive, and animatable full-body human avatars with free-viewpoint rendering. Existing methods for relightable full-body avatars rely on explicit 3D intrinsic decomposition with analytic reflectance models, which require accurate geometry registration and careful optimization to capture realistic light transport effects. This tight coupling of relighting with avatar modeling has hindered expressiveness: to our knowledge, no existing method demonstrates strong facial animation alongside relighting, limiting applicability in telepresence, gaming, and virtual production. We propose to decouple relighting entirely from avatar modeling by treating it as an image-space post-process: a learned translation from flat-lit, albedo-like renderings to a target HDR illumination. To this end, we leverage the strong generative prior of a pre-trained video diffusion relighting model, fine-tuned via LoRA on paired flat-lit and relit frames captured in a light stage. The flat-lit driving frames are produced by an independent expressive full-body avatar framework trained under white-light conditions, requiring no modification to support relighting, making D-Rex directly applicable to any white-light avatar system. We demonstrate that D-Rex enables view- and temporally consistent relighting while faithfully preserving expressive motion and fine-grained facial detail, outperforming physically-based relightable avatar baselines. Project page is https://vcai.mpi-inf.mpg.de/projects/DRex/
title D-Rex : Diffusion Rendering for Relightable Expressive Avatars
topic Graphics
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2604.27871