# SC4D: Sparse-Controlled Video-to-4D Generation and Motion Transfer

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2404.03736 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.03736/

## Key facts

- Cited by 61 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 72 of its 83 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 4 Apr 2024.

## Builds on (most cited first, 30 of 72)

- [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)
- [High-Resolution Image Synthesis with Latent Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2112.10752/) (2021)
- [The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Deep Features as a Perceptual Metric](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1801.03924/) (2018)
- [Photorealistic Text-to-Image Diffusion Models with Deep Language Understanding](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2205.11487/) (2022)
- [3D Gaussian Splatting for Real-Time Radiance Field Rendering](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2308.04079/) (2023)
- [Adding Conditional Control to Text-to-Image Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2302.05543/) (2023)
- [PointNet++: Deep Hierarchical Feature Learning on Point Sets in a Metric Space](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1706.02413/) (2017)
- [Instant Neural Graphics Primitives with a Multiresolution Hash Encoding](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2201.05989/) (2022)
- [DreamFusion: Text-to-3D using 2D Diffusion](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2209.14988/) (2022)
- [RAFT: Recurrent All-Pairs Field Transforms for Optical Flow](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2003.12039/) (2020)
- [An Image is Worth One Word: Personalizing Text-to-Image Generation using Textual Inversion](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2208.01618/) (2022)
- [Make-A-Video: Text-to-Video Generation without Text-Video Data](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2209.14792/) (2022)
- [Objaverse: A Universe of Annotated 3D Objects](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2212.08051/) (2022)
- [Zero-1-to-3: Zero-shot One Image to 3D Object](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.11328/) (2023)
- [D-NeRF: Neural Radiance Fields for Dynamic Scenes](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2011.13961/) (2020)
- [Magic3D: High-Resolution Text-to-3D Content Creation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2211.10440/) (2022)
- [ProlificDreamer: High-Fidelity and Diverse Text-to-3D Generation with Variational Score Distillation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.16213/) (2023)
- [Nerfies: Deformable Neural Radiance Fields](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2011.12948/) (2020)
- [4D Gaussian Splatting for Real-Time Dynamic Scene Rendering](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2310.08528/) (2023)
- [MVDream: Multi-view Diffusion for 3D Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2308.16512/) (2023)
- [DreamGaussian: Generative Gaussian Splatting for Efficient 3D Content Creation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2309.16653/) (2023)
- [Objaverse-XL: A Universe of 10M+ 3D Objects](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2307.05663/) (2023)
- [Neural Scene Flow Fields for Space-Time View Synthesis of Dynamic Scenes](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2011.13084/) (2020)
- [K-Planes: Explicit Radiance Fields in Space, Time, and Appearance](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2301.10241/) (2023)
- [Dynamic 3D Gaussians: Tracking by Persistent Dynamic View Synthesis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2308.09713/) (2023)
- [Point-E: A System for Generating 3D Point Clouds from Complex Prompts](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2212.08751/) (2022)
- [Fantasia3D: Disentangling Geometry and Appearance for High-quality Text-to-3D Content Creation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.13873/) (2023)
- [SyncDreamer: Generating Multiview-consistent Images from a Single-view Image](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2309.03453/) (2023)
- [Score Jacobian Chaining: Lifting Pretrained 2D Diffusion Models for 3D Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2212.00774/) (2022)

## Built on by (most cited first, 30 of 61)

- [VD3D: Taming Large Video Diffusion Transformers for 3D Camera Control](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.12781/) (2024)
- [AC3D: Analyzing and Improving 3D Camera Control in Video Diffusion Transformers](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2411.18673/) (2024)
- [4Diffusion: Multi-view Video Diffusion Model for 4D Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2405.20674/) (2024)
- [3D Gaussian Splatting: Survey, Technologies, Challenges, and Opportunities](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.17418/) (2024)
- [DreamMesh4D: Video-to-4D Generation with Sparse-Controlled Gaussian-Mesh Hybrid Representation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.06756/) (2024)
- [Animate3D: Animating Any 3D Model with Multi-view Video Diffusion](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.11398/) (2024)
- [Puppeteer: Rig and Animate Your 3D Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2508.10898/) (2025)
- [Motion Anything: Any to Motion Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.06955/) (2025)
- [Lyra: Generative 3D Scene Reconstruction via Video Diffusion Model Self-Distillation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2509.19296/) (2025)
- [Gaussian Variation Field Diffusion for High-fidelity Video-to-4D Synthesis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2507.23785/) (2025)
- [AnimateAnyMesh: A Feed-Forward 4D Foundation Model for Text-Driven Universal Mesh Animation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2506.09982/) (2025)
- [DreamArt: Generating Interactable Articulated Objects from a Single Image](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2507.05763/) (2025)
- [Deblur4DGS: 4D Gaussian Splatting from Blurry Monocular Video](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2412.06424/) (2024)
- [ActionMesh: Animated 3D Mesh Generation with Temporal 3D Diffusion](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2601.16148/) (2026)
- [4Dynamic: Text-to-4D Generation with Hybrid Priors](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.12684/) (2024)
- [4D Gaussian Splatting: Modeling Dynamic Scenes with Native 4D Primitives](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2412.20720/) (2024)
- [Simulating the Real World: A Unified Survey of Multimodal Generative Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.04641/) (2025)
- [Articulated Kinematics Distillation from Video Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2504.01204/) (2025)
- [RAM: Recover Any 3D Human Motion in-the-Wild](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.19929/) (2026)
- [WideRange4D: Enabling High-Quality 4D Reconstruction with Wide-Range Movements and Scenes](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.13435/) (2025)
- [Not All Frame Features Are Equal: Video-to-4D Generation via Decoupling Dynamic-Static Features](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2502.08377/) (2025)
- [CharacterShot: Controllable and Consistent 4D Character Animation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2508.07409/) (2025)
- [In-2-4D: Inbetweening from Two Single-View Images to 4D Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2504.08366/) (2025)
- [Digital Twin Generation from Visual Data: A Survey](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2504.13159/) (2025)
- [AnimaMimic: Imitating 3D Animation from Video Priors](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2512.14133/) (2025)
- [DIMO: Diverse 3D Motion Generation for Arbitrary Objects](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2511.07409/) (2025)
- [AdaCluster: Adaptive Query-Key Clustering for Sparse Attention in Video Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2604.18348/) (2026)
- [Bringing Objects to Life: training-free 4D generation from 3D objects through view consistent noise](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2412.20422/) (2024)
- [4DSTR: Advancing Generative 4D Gaussians with Spatial-Temporal Rectification for High-Quality and Consistent 4D Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2511.07241/) (2025)
- [Choreographing a World of Dynamic Objects](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2601.04194/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Recent advances in 2D/3D generative models enable the generation of dynamic 3D objects from a single-view video. Existing approaches utilize score distillation sampling to form the dynamic scene as dynamic NeRF or dense 3D Gaussians. However, these methods struggle to strike a balance among reference view alignment, spatio-temporal consistency, and motion fidelity under single-view conditions due to the implicit nature of NeRF or the intricate dense Gaussian motion prediction. To address these issues, this paper proposes an efficient, sparse-controlled video-to-4D framework named SC4D, that decouples motion and appearance to achieve superior video-to-4D generation. Moreover, we introduce Adaptive Gaussian (AG) initialization and Gaussian Alignment (GA) loss to mitigate shape degeneration issue, ensuring the fidelity of the learned motion and shape. Comprehensive experimental results demonstrate that our method surpasses existing methods in both quality and efficiency. In addition, facilitated by the disentangled modeling of motion and appearance of SC4D, we devise a novel application that seamlessly transfers the learned motion onto a diverse array of 4D entities according to textual descriptions.