# SparseCtrl: Adding Sparse Controls to Text-to-Video Diffusion Models

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2311.16933 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.16933/

## Key facts

- Cited by 175 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Placed in Video generation, one of 14 directions in Diffusion models.
- Builds on 60 of its 64 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 28 Nov 2023.

## Placed in

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

## Builds on (most cited first, 30 of 60)

- [Attention Is All You Need](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1706.03762/) (2017)
- [Learning Transferable Visual Models From Natural Language Supervision](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.00020/) (2021)
- [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)
- [LoRA: Low-Rank Adaptation of Large Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2106.09685/) (2021)
- [The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Deep Features as a Perceptual Metric](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1801.03924/) (2018)
- [Denoising Diffusion Implicit Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2010.02502/) (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)
- [Adding Conditional Control to Text-to-Image Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2302.05543/) (2023)
- [SDXL: Improving Latent Diffusion Models for High-Resolution Image Synthesis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2307.01952/) (2023)
- [DreamBooth: Fine Tuning Text-to-Image Diffusion Models for Subject-Driven Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2208.12242/) (2022)
- [Video Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2204.03458/) (2022)
- [An Image is Worth One Word: Personalizing Text-to-Image Generation using Textual Inversion](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2208.01618/) (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)
- [Towards Robust Monocular Depth Estimation: Mixing Datasets for Zero-shot Cross-dataset Transfer](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1907.01341/) (2019)
- [Align your Latents: High-Resolution Video Synthesis with Latent Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2304.08818/) (2023)
- [IP-Adapter: Text Compatible Image Prompt Adapter for Text-to-Image Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2308.06721/) (2023)
- [AnimateDiff: Animate Your Personalized Text-to-Image Diffusion Models without Specific Tuning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2307.04725/) (2023)
- [T2I-Adapter: Learning Adapters to Dig out More Controllable Ability for Text-to-Image Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2302.08453/) (2023)
- [VideoMAE: Masked Autoencoders are Data-Efficient Learners for Self-Supervised Video Pre-Training](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2203.12602/) (2022)
- [Frozen in Time: A Joint Video and Image Encoder for End-to-End Retrieval](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2104.00650/) (2021)
- [Multi-Concept Customization of Text-to-Image Diffusion](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2212.04488/) (2022)
- [CogVideo: Large-scale Pretraining for Text-to-Video Generation via Transformers](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2205.15868/) (2022)
- [Tune-A-Video: One-Shot Tuning of Image Diffusion Models for Text-to-Video Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2212.11565/) (2022)
- [eDiff-I: Text-to-Image Diffusion Models with an Ensemble of Expert Denoisers](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2211.01324/) (2022)

## Built on by (most cited first, 30 of 175)

- [HunyuanVideo: A Systematic Framework For Large Video Generative Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2412.03603/) (2024)
- [CameraCtrl: Enabling Camera Control for Text-to-Video Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.02101/) (2024)
- [Open-Sora Plan: Open-Source Large Video Generation Model](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2412.00131/) (2024)
- [ReCamMaster: Camera-Controlled Generative Rendering from A Single Video](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.11647/) (2025)
- [StreamingT2V: Consistent, Dynamic, and Extendable Long Video Generation from Text](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.14773/) (2024)
- [StoryDiffusion: Consistent Self-Attention for Long-Range Image and Video Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2405.01434/) (2024)
- [DepthCrafter: Generating Consistent Long Depth Sequences for Open-world Videos](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2409.02095/) (2024)
- [Diffusion as Shader: 3D-aware Video Diffusion for Versatile Video Generation Control](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2501.03847/) (2025)
- [CamCo: Camera-Controllable 3D-Consistent Image-to-Video Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.02509/) (2024)
- [DragAnything: Motion Control for Anything using Entity Representation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.07420/) (2024)
- [DimensionX: Create Any 3D and 4D Scenes from a Single Image with Controllable Video Diffusion](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2411.04928/) (2024)
- [GameFactory: Creating New Games with Generative Interactive Videos](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2501.08325/) (2025)
- [ID-Animator: Zero-Shot Identity-Preserving Human Video Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.15275/) (2024)
- [Collaborative Video Diffusion: Consistent Multi-video Generation with Camera Control](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2405.17414/) (2024)
- [Go-with-the-Flow: Motion-Controllable Video Diffusion Models Using Real-Time Warped Noise](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2501.08331/) (2025)
- [Long Context Tuning for Video Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.10589/) (2025)
- [Boximator: Generating Rich and Controllable Motions for Video Synthesis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2402.01566/) (2024)
- [MotionClone: Training-Free Motion Cloning for Controllable Video Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.05338/) (2024)
- [CameraCtrl II: Dynamic Scene Exploration via Camera-controlled Video Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.10592/) (2025)
- [SynCamMaster: Synchronizing Multi-Camera Video Generation from Diverse Viewpoints](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2412.07760/) (2024)
- [X-Portrait: Expressive Portrait Animation with Hierarchical Motion Attention](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.15931/) (2024)
- [Ca2-VDM: Efficient Autoregressive Video Diffusion Model with Causal Generation and Cache Sharing](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2411.16375/) (2024)
- [3DTrajMaster: Mastering 3D Trajectory for Multi-Entity Motion in Video Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2412.07759/) (2024)
- [I2V-Adapter: A General Image-to-Video Adapter for Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.16693/) (2023)
- [ToonCrafter: Generative Cartoon Interpolation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2405.17933/) (2024)
- [Ctrl-Adapter: An Efficient and Versatile Framework for Adapting Diverse Controls to Any Diffusion Model](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.09967/) (2024)
- [HumanVid: Demystifying Training Data for Camera-controllable Human Image Animation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.17438/) (2024)
- [Image Conductor: Precision Control for Interactive Video Synthesis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.15339/) (2024)
- [Follow-Your-Creation: Empowering 4D Creation through Video Inpainting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2506.04590/) (2025)
- [Video Diffusion Models are Training-free Motion Interpreter and Controller](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2405.14864/) (2024)

## Abstract (arXiv)

The development of text-to-video (T2V), i.e., generating videos with a given text prompt, has been significantly advanced in recent years. However, relying solely on text prompts often results in ambiguous frame composition due to spatial uncertainty. The research community thus leverages the dense structure signals, e.g., per-frame depth/edge sequences, to enhance controllability, whose collection accordingly increases the burden of inference. In this work, we present SparseCtrl to enable flexible structure control with temporally sparse signals, requiring only one or a few inputs, as shown in Figure 1. It incorporates an additional condition encoder to process these sparse signals while leaving the pre-trained T2V model untouched. The proposed approach is compatible with various modalities, including sketches, depth maps, and RGB images, providing more practical control for video generation and promoting applications such as storyboarding, depth rendering, keyframe animation, and interpolation. Extensive experiments demonstrate the generalization of SparseCtrl on both original and personalized T2V generators. Codes and models will be publicly available at https://guoyww.github.io/projects/SparseCtrl .