Pixel Cube: Diffusion-based Portrait Video Relighting Through Realistic Lighting Reproduction

1George Mason University 2Columbia University 3LightThought
SIGGRAPH 2026 Journal Track

We present a diffusion-based model for relighting dynamic portrait videos with photorealism and temporal consistency.

Abstract

We present a diffusion-based method for relighting dynamic portrait videos with photorealism and temporal consistency. Our method is fueled by a hybrid training dataset that consists of real-captured and rendered dynamic portrait videos with diverse subject appearances, facial motions, head poses, and known lighting conditions. Specifically, we construct an LED-based lighting system for realistic lighting emulation and high-speed video relighting data acquisition. By leveraging the image priors embedded in pre-trained video diffusion models, and using per-frame high dynamic range (HDR) environment map as lighting control, we train a high-performance generative model for realistic and identity-preserving dynamic portrait video relighting. In addition to the environment map control, our model uses a synthesized background image to enable control on the camera's exposure level and color tone. Our model can produce temporally consistent relit portrait video that looks realistic and harmonious under a provided new environment and faithfully preserve the subject's expression and fine facial features, including skin tone, wrinkles, and facial hair. Our model generalizes well to unseen data, in terms of the subject appearance, motion, and lighting condition. We perform extensive experiments on relighting in-the-wild videos with various environment maps and demonstrate practical applications on portrait photography. Results show that our method achieves state-of-the-art performance in photorealism, lighting harmony, and temporal consistency.

Pipeline

Pixel Cube Delight Pipeline

Delight stage: extracting illumination-independent portrait appearance from the input video.

Supplementary Video

Another Carousel

Poster

BibTeX

@article{zhang2026pixelcube,
  title={Pixel Cube: Diffusion-based Portrait Video Relighting Through Realistic Lighting Reproduction},
  author={Zhang, Yufan and Ji, Yu and Ajiboye, Ayo and Wu, Rundi and Guo, Yu and Zheng, Changxi and Ye, Jinwei},
  year={2026},
  publisher = {Association for Computing Machinery},
  address = {New York, NY, USA},
  journal = {ACM Trans. Graph.},
  url={https://yufanzhang82.github.io/PixelCube/}
}