DreamActor-M1 – An AI Image Animation Framework Launched by ByteDance

What is DreamActor-M1?

DreamActor-M1 is an advanced AI image animation framework introduced by ByteDance, capable of transforming static character photos into vivid animated videos. It adopts a hybrid guidance mechanism, combining implicit facial representation, 3D head sphere, and 3D body skeleton control signals to achieve precise control over facial expressions and body movements. Supporting multi-language voice-driven facial animation, it can generate lip-sync results. DreamActor-M1 features high fidelity and identity preservation, producing videos with strong temporal coherence.

The main functions of DreamActor-M1

• Static Photo to Dynamic Video: By combining a static photo with a reference action video, the person in the photo can be seamlessly replaced into the video scenario, generating dynamic videos with delicate expressions, natural movements, and high-definition image quality.
• Precise Control: Combined with implicit facial representation, 3D head pose, and 3D body skeleton, it enables robust control of facial expressions and body movements.
• Flexible Motion Transfer: Supports transferring only part of the motion, such as facial expressions and head movements.
• Facial Animation Support: Can be extended to audio-driven facial animation, achieving lip-sync in multiple languages.
• Shape-Aware Animation: Generates shape-adaptive animations through bone length adjustment technology.
• Diverse Style Support: Shows robustness for various characters and motion styles.
• Multi-Perspective Support: Capable of generating animation results from different head poses.

The Technical Principle of DreamActor-M1

• Hybrid Guidance Mechanism: DreamActor-M1 employs a hybrid guidance mechanism that integrates control signals such as implicit facial representations, 3D head poses, and 3D body skeletons to achieve precise control over facial expressions and body movements. This hybrid approach ensures that the generated animations are highly realistic in detail while maintaining overall coordination and smoothness.
• Multi-Scale Adaptability: The framework utilizes a progressive training strategy, enabling it to handle various body postures and images of different resolutions. It supports conversions from portrait views to full-body views. This multi-scale adaptability allows DreamActor-M1 to generate high-quality animation content in a wide range of scenarios.
• Long-Term Temporal Consistency: DreamActor-M1 integrates motion patterns and visual references across consecutive frames to ensure temporal consistency in unobserved regions during complex movements. This is crucial for generating long, coherent animations, effectively avoiding common artifacts such as “ghosting” or mismatched movements.
• Facial Animation with Speech Support: The framework supports audio-driven facial animation, enabling multi-language lip synchronization. By using audio input to drive facial expression changes, it can generate natural lip movements, further enhancing the realism of the animations.
• Shape-Aware Animation: DreamActor-M1 features shape-aware animation capabilities, utilizing bone length adjustment techniques to achieve shape-adaptive animation generation. This ensures that the generated animations better adapt to the physical characteristics of different characters.

Project address of DreamActor-M1

• Project official website: https://grisoon.github.io/DreamActor-M1/
• arXiv technical paper: https://arxiv.org/pdf/2504.01724

Application Scenarios of DreamActor-M1

• Virtual Character Creation: Seamlessly transfer an actor’s performance to a virtual character, capturing the actor’s facial expressions, movement rhythms, and emotional details to endow the virtual character with vivid emotions and movements.
• Personalized Animated Video Generation: Users can transform their photos into lively and interesting animated videos, enhancing the fun and appeal of the content. For example, a static photo can be turned into an animated video with fun actions such as dancing or singing, which can then be shared on social media.
• Virtual Hosts and Internet Celebrities: This technology can be used to create virtual hosts or internet celebrities, reducing production costs and time. Virtual hosts can stream or post content 24/7, with customizable images and styles to meet various needs.
• Creative Advertising Production: Advertising agencies can use this technology to quickly generate attractive advertising videos by combining products with vivid character animations, enhancing the appeal and dissemination effectiveness of the advertisements.