# SCENIC: Scene-aware Semantic Navigation with Instruction-guided Control

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2412.15664 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2412.15664/

## Key facts

- Cited by 13 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Placed in 3D, point cloud and scene generation, one of 14 directions in Diffusion models.
- Builds on 82 of its 99 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 20 Dec 2024.

## Placed in

- Diffusion models / [3D, point cloud and scene generation](https://mlsanity.com/diffusion/3d-point-cloud-and-scene-generation/)

## Builds on (most cited first, 30 of 82)

- [Denoising Diffusion Implicit Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2010.02502/) (2020)
- [Video Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2204.03458/) (2022)
- [Matterport3D: Learning from RGB-D Data in Indoor Environments](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1709.06158/) (2017)
- [AMASS: Archive of Motion Capture as Surface Shapes](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1904.03278/) (2019)
- [On the Continuity of Rotation Representations in Neural Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1812.07035/) (2018)
- [Spatial Temporal Graph Convolutional Networks for Skeleton-Based Action Recognition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1801.07455/) (2018)
- [Efficient Geometry-aware 3D Generative Adversarial Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2112.07945/) (2021)
- [Human Motion Diffusion Model](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2209.14916/) (2022)
- [The Replica Dataset: A Digital Replica of Indoor Spaces](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1906.05797/) (2019)
- [MotionDiffuse: Text-Driven Human Motion Generation with Diffusion Model](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2208.15001/) (2022)
- [Executing your Commands via Motion Diffusion in Latent Space](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2212.04048/) (2022)
- [Action2Motion: Conditioned Generation of 3D Human Motions](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2007.15240/) (2020)
- [Human Motion Diffusion as a Generative Prior](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.01418/) (2023)
- [ReMoDiffuse: Retrieval-Augmented Motion Diffusion Model](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2304.01116/) (2023)
- [BABEL: Bodies, Action and Behavior with English Labels](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2106.09696/) (2021)
- [BEHAVE: Dataset and Method for Tracking Human Object Interactions](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2204.06950/) (2022)
- [OmniControl: Control Any Joint at Any Time for Human Motion Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2310.08580/) (2023)
- [Guided Motion Diffusion for Controllable Human Motion Synthesis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.12577/) (2023)
- [MoFusion: A Framework for Denoising-Diffusion-based Motion Synthesis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2212.04495/) (2022)
- [FLAME: Free-form Language-based Motion Synthesis & Editing](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2209.00349/) (2022)
- [Object Motion Guided Human Motion Synthesis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2309.16237/) (2023)
- [InterGen: Diffusion-based Multi-human Motion Generation under Complex Interactions](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2304.05684/) (2023)
- [Stochastic Scene-Aware Motion Prediction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2108.08284/) (2021)
- [InterDiff: Generating 3D Human-Object Interactions with Physics-Informed Diffusion](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2308.16905/) (2023)
- [HUMANISE: Language-conditioned Human Motion Generation in 3D Scenes](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2210.09729/) (2022)
- [GOAL: Generating 4D Whole-Body Motion for Hand-Object Grasping](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2112.11454/) (2021)
- [Trace and Pace: Controllable Pedestrian Animation via Guided Trajectory Diffusion](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2304.01893/) (2023)
- [CG-HOI: Contact-Guided 3D Human-Object Interaction Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.16097/) (2023)
- [Human POSEitioning System (HPS): 3D Human Pose Estimation and Self-localization in Large Scenes from Body-Mounted Sensors](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.17265/) (2021)
- [Scaling Up Dynamic Human-Scene Interaction Modeling](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.08629/) (2024)

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

- [InterMimic: Towards Universal Whole-Body Control for Physics-Based Human-Object Interactions](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2502.20390/) (2025)
- [InterPrior: Scaling Generative Control for Physics-Based Human-Object Interactions](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2602.06035/) (2026)
- [Perceiving and Acting in First-Person: A Dataset and Benchmark for Egocentric Human-Object-Human Interactions](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2508.04681/) (2025)
- [3D Human Interaction Generation: A Survey](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.13120/) (2025)
- [ECHO: Ego-Centric modeling of Human-Object interactions](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2508.21556/) (2025)
- [Moving by Looking: Towards Vision-Driven Avatar Motion Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2509.19259/) (2025)
- [InfBaGel: Human-Object-Scene Interaction Generation with Dynamic Perception and Iterative Refinement](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2604.04843/) (2026)
- [SPG: Improving Motion Diffusion by Smooth Perturbation Guidance](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.02577/) (2025)
- [Navigating Motion Agents in Dynamic and Cluttered Environments through LLM Reasoning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.07323/) (2025)
- [Visually-grounded Humanoid Agents](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2604.08509/) (2026)
- [GRAFT: Geometric Refinement and Fitting Transformer for Human Scene Reconstruction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2604.19624/) (2026)
- [Surface Keypoint Representation for Multi-Object and Articulated Human-Object Interaction Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2608.03158/) (2026)
- [SceneAdapt: Scene-aware Adaptation of Human Motion Diffusion](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2510.13044/) (2025)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Synthesizing natural human motion that adapts to complex environments while allowing creative control remains a fundamental challenge in motion synthesis. Existing models often fall short, either by assuming flat terrain or lacking the ability to control motion semantics through text. To address these limitations, we introduce SCENIC, a diffusion model designed to generate human motion that adapts to dynamic terrains within virtual scenes while enabling semantic control through natural language. The key technical challenge lies in simultaneously reasoning about complex scene geometry while maintaining text control. This requires understanding both high-level navigation goals and fine-grained environmental constraints. The model must ensure physical plausibility and precise navigation across varied terrain, while also preserving user-specified text control, such as ``carefully stepping over obstacles" or ``walking upstairs like a zombie." Our solution introduces a hierarchical scene reasoning approach. At its core is a novel scene-dependent, goal-centric canonicalization that handles high-level goal constraint, and is complemented by an ego-centric distance field that captures local geometric details. This dual representation enables our model to generate physically plausible motion across diverse 3D scenes. By implementing frame-wise text alignment, our system achieves seamless transitions between different motion styles while maintaining scene constraints. Experiments demonstrate our novel diffusion model generates arbitrarily long human motions that both adapt to complex scenes with varying terrain surfaces and respond to textual prompts. Additionally, we show SCENIC can generalize to four real-scene datasets. Our code, dataset, and models will be released at urlhttps://virtualhumans.mpi-inf.mpg.de/scenic/.