# StickMotion: Generating 3D Human Motions by Drawing a Stickman

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2503.04829 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.04829/

## Key facts

- Cited by 9 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 51 of its 58 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 5 Mar 2025.

## Builds on (most cited first, 30 of 51)

- [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)
- [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)
- [Classifier-Free Diffusion Guidance](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2207.12598/) (2022)
- [Generative Adversarial Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2203.00667/) (2022)
- [MotionDiffuse: Text-Driven Human Motion Generation with Diffusion Model](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2208.15001/) (2022)
- [T2M-GPT: Generating Human Motion from Textual Descriptions with Discrete Representations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2301.06052/) (2023)
- [Action-Conditioned 3D Human Motion Synthesis with Transformer VAE](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2104.05670/) (2021)
- [Action2Motion: Conditioned Generation of 3D Human Motions](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2007.15240/) (2020)
- [MotionCLIP: Exposing Human Motion Generation to CLIP Space](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2203.08063/) (2022)
- [MoMask: Generative Masked Modeling of 3D Human Motions](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.00063/) (2023)
- [Efficient Attention: Attention with Linear Complexities](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1812.01243/) (2018)
- [The KIT Motion-Language Dataset](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1607.03827/) (2016)
- [EDGE: Editable Dance Generation From Music](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2211.10658/) (2022)
- [ReMoDiffuse: Retrieval-Augmented Motion Diffusion Model](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2304.01116/) (2023)
- [Language2Pose: Natural Language Grounded Pose Forecasting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1907.01108/) (2019)
- [A Survey on Generative Diffusion Model](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2209.02646/) (2022)
- [Diffusion-based Generation, Optimization, and Planning in 3D Scenes](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2301.06015/) (2023)
- [FLAME: Free-form Language-based Motion Synthesis & Editing](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2209.00349/) (2022)
- [Re-Imagen: Retrieval-Augmented Text-to-Image Generator](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2209.14491/) (2022)
- [InterGen: Diffusion-based Multi-human Motion Generation under Complex Interactions](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2304.05684/) (2023)
- [Speech Gesture Generation from the Trimodal Context of Text, Audio, and Speaker Identity](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2009.02119/) (2020)
- [InterDiff: Generating 3D Human-Object Interactions with Physics-Informed Diffusion](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2308.16905/) (2023)
- [Synthesis of Compositional Animations from Textual Descriptions](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.14675/) (2021)
- [Populating 3D Scenes by Learning Human-Scene Interaction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2012.11581/) (2020)
- [GestureDiffuCLIP: Gesture Diffusion Model with CLIP Latents](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.14613/) (2023)
- [MotionGPT: Finetuned LLMs Are General-Purpose Motion Generators](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2306.10900/) (2023)
- [Getting aligned on representational alignment](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2310.13018/) (2023)

## Built on by (most cited first, 9 of 9)

- [X-MoGen: Unified Motion Generation across Humans and Animals](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2508.05162/) (2025)
- [Deep Sketch-Based 3D Modeling: A Survey](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.03287/) (2026)
- [U-Mind: A Unified Framework for Real-Time Multimodal Interaction with Audiovisual Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2602.23739/) (2026)
- [LaMoGen: Language to Motion Generation Through LLM-Guided Symbolic Inference](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.11605/) (2026)
- [ReactMotion: Generating Reactive Listener Motions from Speaker Utterance](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.15083/) (2026)
- [Coordinating Multiple Conditions for Trajectory-Controlled Human Motion Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2605.13729/) (2026)
- [IKMo: Image-Keyframed Motion Generation with Trajectory-Pose Conditioned Motion Diffusion Model](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.21146/) (2025)
- [DrawMotion: Generating 3D Human Motions by Freehand Drawing](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2605.20955/) (2026)
- [CleanMDM: Clean Motion Diffusion Model for Multimodal Motion Cleanup](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2610.05411/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Text-to-motion generation, which translates textual descriptions into human motions, has been challenging in accurately capturing detailed user-imagined motions from simple text inputs. This paper introduces StickMotion, an efficient diffusion-based network designed for multi-condition scenarios, which generates desired motions based on traditional text and our proposed stickman conditions for global and local control of these motions, respectively. We address the challenges introduced by the user-friendly stickman from three perspectives: 1) Data generation. We develop an algorithm to generate hand-drawn stickmen automatically across different dataset formats. 2) Multi-condition fusion. We propose a multi-condition module that integrates into the diffusion process and obtains outputs of all possible condition combinations, reducing computational complexity and enhancing StickMotion's performance compared to conventional approaches with the self-attention module. 3) Dynamic supervision. We empower StickMotion to make minor adjustments to the stickman's position within the output sequences, generating more natural movements through our proposed dynamic supervision strategy. Through quantitative experiments and user studies, sketching stickmen saves users about 51.5% of their time generating motions consistent with their imagination. Our codes, demos, and relevant data will be released to facilitate further research and validation within the scientific community.