# GD-VDM: Generated Depth for better Diffusion-based Video Generation

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2306.11173 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2306.11173/

## Key facts

- Cited by 13 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Placed in Video generation, one of 14 directions in Diffusion models.
- Builds on 45 of its 49 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 19 Jun 2023.

## Placed in

- Diffusion models / [Video generation](https://mlsanity.com/diffusion/video-generation/)

## Builds on (most cited first, 30 of 45)

- [Denoising Diffusion Probabilistic Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2006.11239/) (2020)
- [U-Net: Convolutional Networks for Biomedical Image Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1505.04597/) (2015)
- [High-Resolution Image Synthesis with Latent Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2112.10752/) (2021)
- [Score-Based Generative Modeling through Stochastic Differential Equations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2011.13456/) (2020)
- [Diffusion Models Beat GANs on Image Synthesis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2105.05233/) (2021)
- [Deep Unsupervised Learning using Nonequilibrium Thermodynamics](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1503.03585/) (2015)
- [Hierarchical Text-Conditional Image Generation with CLIP Latents](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2204.06125/) (2022)
- [Photorealistic Text-to-Image Diffusion Models with Deep Language Understanding](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2205.11487/) (2022)
- [Classifier-Free Diffusion Guidance](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2207.12598/) (2022)
- [Image-to-Image Translation with Conditional Adversarial Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1611.07004/) (2016)
- [The Cityscapes Dataset for Semantic Urban Scene Understanding](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1604.01685/) (2016)
- [Analyzing and Improving the Image Quality of StyleGAN](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1912.04958/) (2019)
- [Large Scale GAN Training for High Fidelity Natural Image Synthesis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1809.11096/) (2018)
- [Video Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2204.03458/) (2022)
- [Imagen Video: High Definition Video Generation with Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2210.02303/) (2022)
- [Make-A-Video: Text-to-Video Generation without Text-Video Data](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2209.14792/) (2022)
- [Image Super-Resolution via Iterative Refinement](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2104.07636/) (2021)
- [3D U-Net: Learning Dense Volumetric Segmentation from Sparse Annotation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1606.06650/) (2016)
- [Align your Latents: High-Resolution Video Synthesis with Latent Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2304.08818/) (2023)
- [DiffWave: A Versatile Diffusion Model for Audio Synthesis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2009.09761/) (2020)
- [Palette: Image-to-Image Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2111.05826/) (2021)
- [Towards Accurate Generative Models of Video: A New Metric & Challenges](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1812.01717/) (2018)
- [Real-Time Single Image and Video Super-Resolution Using an Efficient Sub-Pixel Convolutional Neural Network](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1609.05158/) (2016)
- [High-Resolution Image Synthesis and Semantic Manipulation with Conditional GANs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1711.11585/) (2017)
- [Cascaded Diffusion Models for High Fidelity Image Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2106.15282/) (2021)
- [Improved Techniques for Training Score-Based Generative Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2006.09011/) (2020)
- [Unsupervised Learning of Depth and Ego-Motion from Video](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1704.07813/) (2017)
- [WaveGrad: Estimating Gradients for Waveform Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2009.00713/) (2020)
- [MoCoGAN: Decomposing Motion and Content for Video Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1707.04993/) (2017)
- [MagicVideo: Efficient Video Generation With Latent Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2211.11018/) (2022)

## Built on by (most cited first, 13 of 13)

- [A Survey on Video Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2310.10647/) (2023)
- [InstructVideo: Instructing Video Diffusion Models with Human Feedback](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.12490/) (2023)
- [A Recipe for Scaling up Text-to-Video Generation with Text-free Videos](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.15770/) (2023)
- [MicroCinema: A Divide-and-Conquer Approach for Text-to-Video Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.18829/) (2023)
- [Unified Dense Prediction of Video Diffusion](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.09344/) (2025)
- [DualCamCtrl: Dual-Branch Diffusion Model for Geometry-Aware Camera-Controlled Video Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2511.23127/) (2025)
- [FinePhys: Fine-grained Human Action Generation by Explicitly Incorporating Physical Laws for Effective Skeletal Guidance](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.13437/) (2025)
- [Anomaly Detection and Generation with Diffusion Models: A Survey](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2506.09368/) (2025)
- [HVG-3D: Bridging Real and Simulation Domains for 3D-Conditional Hand-Object Interaction Video Synthesis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2604.03305/) (2026)
- [Evolution of Video Generative Foundations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2604.06339/) (2026)
- [One-Shot Learning Meets Depth Diffusion in Multi-Object Videos](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2408.16704/) (2024)
- [Label-free Motion-Conditioned Diffusion Model for Cardiac Ultrasound Synthesis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2512.09418/) (2025)
- [N-Tree Diffusion for Long-Horizon Wildfire Risk Forecasting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.07361/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

The field of generative models has recently witnessed significant progress, with diffusion models showing remarkable performance in image generation. In light of this success, there is a growing interest in exploring the application of diffusion models to other modalities. One such challenge is the generation of coherent videos of complex scenes, which poses several technical difficulties, such as capturing temporal dependencies and generating long, high-resolution videos. This paper proposes GD-VDM, a novel diffusion model for video generation, demonstrating promising results. GD-VDM is based on a two-phase generation process involving generating depth videos followed by a novel diffusion Vid2Vid model that generates a coherent real-world video. We evaluated GD-VDM on the Cityscapes dataset and found that it generates more diverse and complex scenes compared to natural baselines, demonstrating the efficacy of our approach.