Think Before You Diffuse: Infusing Physical Rules into Video Diffusion
On the map: LLM reasoning → Spatial and embodied reasoning
also in 1 more
Abstract (arXiv)
Recent video diffusion models have demonstrated their great capability in generating visually-pleasing results, while synthesizing the correct physical effects in generated videos remains challenging. The complexity of real-world motions, interactions, and dynamics introduce great difficulties when learning physics from data. In this work, we propose DiffPhy, a generic framework that enables physically-correct and photo-realistic video generation by fine-tuning a pre-trained video diffusion model. Our method leverages large language models (LLMs) to infer rich physical context from the text prompt. To incorporate this context into the video diffusion model, we use a multimodal large language model (MLLM) to verify intermediate latent variables against the inferred physical rules, guiding the gradient updates of model accordingly. Textual output of LLM is transformed into continuous signals. We then formulate a set of training objectives that jointly ensure physical accuracy and semantic alignment with the input text. Additionally, failure facts of physical phenomena are corrected via attention injection. We also establish a high-quality physical video dataset containing diverse phyiscal actions and events to facilitate effective finetuning. Extensive experiments on public benchmarks demonstrate that DiffPhy is able to produce state-of-the-art results across diverse physics-related scenarios. Our project page is available at https://bwgzk-keke.github.io/DiffPhy/.
Key facts. Cited by 16 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026). Placed in Spatial and embodied reasoning, one of 17 directions in LLM reasoning. Builds on 32 of its 66 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 27 May 2025.
Builds on
32 of 66 references.
References · 32
- 2023LLaMA: Open and Efficient Foundation Language Modelscited by 14,132
- 2025DeepSeek-R1: Incentivizing Reasoning Capability in LLMs via Reinforcement Learningcited by 6,330
- 2025Wan: Open and Advanced Large-Scale Video Generative Modelscited by 2,708
- 2023Stable Video Diffusion: Scaling Latent Video Diffusion Models to Large Datasetscited by 2,581
- 2024CogVideoX: Text-to-Video Diffusion Models with An Expert Transformercited by 2,261
- 2024HunyuanVideo: A Systematic Framework For Large Video Generative Modelscited by 1,660
- 2022CogVideo: Large-scale Pretraining for Text-to-Video Generation via Transformerscited by 985
- 2025Cosmos World Foundation Model Platform for Physical AIcited by 864
- 2023LAVIE: High-Quality Video Generation with Cascaded Latent Diffusion Modelscited by 349
- 2018A Short Note about Kinetics-600cited by 333
- 2024Diffusion Models Are Real-Time Game Enginescited by 296
- 2019DiffTaichi: Differentiable Programming for Physical Simulationcited by 258
20 more
- 2023LLM-grounded Diffusion: Enhancing Prompt Understanding of Text-to-Image Diffusion Models with Large Language Modelscited by 243
- 2024VideoPhy: Evaluating Physical Commonsense for Video Generationcited by 228
- 2025Sparse VideoGen: Accelerating Video Diffusion Transformers with Spatial-Temporal Sparsitycited by 217
- 2024How Far is Video Generation from World Model: A Physical Law Perspectivecited by 212
- 2024Towards World Simulator: Crafting Physical Commonsense-Based Benchmark for Video Generationcited by 174
- 2025Do generative video models understand physical principles?cited by 161
- 2023PAC-NeRF: Physics Augmented Continuum Neural Radiance Fields for Geometry-Agnostic System Identificationcited by 154
- 2025VideoPhy-2: A Challenging Action-Centric Physical Commonsense Evaluation in Video Generationcited by 149
- 2023VideoDirectorGPT: Consistent Multi-scene Video Generation via LLM-Guided Planningcited by 141
- 2025Cosmos-Transfer1: Conditional World Generation with Adaptive Multimodal Controlcited by 106
- 2025One-Minute Video Generation with Test-Time Trainingcited by 101
- 2024PhyT2V: LLM-Guided Iterative Self-Refinement for Physics-Grounded Text-to-Video Generationcited by 80
- 2025RIFLEx: A Free Lunch for Length Extrapolation in Video Diffusion Transformerscited by 66
- 2019DensePhysNet: Learning Dense Physical Object Representations via Multi-step Dynamic Interactionscited by 63
- 2024VidGen-1M: A Large-Scale Dataset for Text-to-video Generationcited by 62
- 2025Vchitect-2.0: Parallel Transformer for Scaling Up Video Diffusion Modelscited by 60
- 2025FlashVideo: Flowing Fidelity to Detail for Efficient High-Resolution Video Generationcited by 32
- 2024Compositional 3D-aware Video Generation with LLM Directorcited by 18
- 2025Generative AI for Film Creation: A Survey of Recent Advancescited by 17
- 2025Enabling Versatile Controls for Video Diffusion Modelscited by 3
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Citing papers per year: 2025: 4; 2026: 12.
16 papers.
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- 2026Self-Refining Video Samplingcited by 15
- 2026VideoCoCo: Code-as-CoT for Physically-Consistent Video Generation via an Agentic Dual-Engine Systemcited by 8
- 2025MoReGen: Multi-Agent Motion-Reasoning Engine for Code-based Text-to-Video Synthesiscited by 5
- 2025ReasonX: MLLM-Guided Intrinsic Image Decompositioncited by 5
- 2025Endless World: Real-Time 3D-Aware Long Video Generationcited by 4
- 2025Bootstrapping Physics-Grounded Video Generation through VLM-Guided Iterative Self-Refinementcited by 3
- 2026Physics in 2-Steps: Locking Motion Priors Before Visual Refinement Erases Themcited by 3
- 2026Phys4D: Fine-Grained Physics-Consistent 4D Modeling from Video Diffusioncited by 2
- 2026Pretrained Video Models as Differentiable Physics Simulators for Urban Wind Flowscited by 2
- 2026Seeking Physics in Diffusion Noisecited by 1
- 2026Distilling Physical Priors into Streaming World Modelscited by 1
- 2026PhysRAG: Enhancing Physics-Awareness in Video Generation via Retrieval-Augmented Generationcited by 0
4 more
- 2026VeriPhy: Agentic Physical Reasoning for World Model Evaluation and Refinementcited by 0
- 2026Physis-Lang: Self-Evolving Language as a Physical Representation for Video World Modelcited by 0
- 2026Video Generation Models: A Survey of Post-Training and Alignmentcited by 0
- 2026World Models' Last Exam in Physicscited by 0
- 2026World Models' Last Exam in Physics6 Oct 2026
- 2026Video Generation Models: A Survey of Post-Training and Alignment30 Sep 2026
- 2026Physis-Lang: Self-Evolving Language as a Physical Representation for Video World Model30 Sep 2026
- 2026VeriPhy: Agentic Physical Reasoning for World Model Evaluation and Refinement2 Sep 2026
- 2026Distilling Physical Priors into Streaming World Models8 Aug 2026
- 2026VideoCoCo: Code-as-CoT for Physically-Consistent Video Generation via an Agentic Dual-Engine System29 Jul 2026
- 2026PhysRAG: Enhancing Physics-Awareness in Video Generation via Retrieval-Augmented Generation25 Jun 2026
- 2026Physics in 2-Steps: Locking Motion Priors Before Visual Refinement Erases Them4 Jun 2026
- 2026Pretrained Video Models as Differentiable Physics Simulators for Urban Wind Flows22 Mar 2026
- 2026Seeking Physics in Diffusion Noise15 Mar 2026
- 2026Phys4D: Fine-Grained Physics-Consistent 4D Modeling from Video Diffusion3 Mar 2026
- 2026Self-Refining Video Sampling26 Jan 2026
4 more
- 2025Endless World: Real-Time 3D-Aware Long Video Generation13 Dec 2025
- 2025ReasonX: MLLM-Guided Intrinsic Image Decomposition3 Dec 2025
- 2025MoReGen: Multi-Agent Motion-Reasoning Engine for Code-based Text-to-Video Synthesis3 Dec 2025
- 2025Bootstrapping Physics-Grounded Video Generation through VLM-Guided Iterative Self-Refinement25 Nov 2025
- 2026Phys4D: Fine-Grained Physics-Consistent 4D Modeling from Video Diffusioncited by 2
- 2026Distilling Physical Priors into Streaming World Modelscited by 1
- 2026VeriPhy: Agentic Physical Reasoning for World Model Evaluation and Refinementcited by 0
- 2026Physis-Lang: Self-Evolving Language as a Physical Representation for Video World Modelcited by 0
- 2026World Models' Last Exam in Physicscited by 0
- 2026World Models' Last Exam in Physics6 Oct 2026
- 2026Physis-Lang: Self-Evolving Language as a Physical Representation for Video World Model30 Sep 2026
- 2026VeriPhy: Agentic Physical Reasoning for World Model Evaluation and Refinement2 Sep 2026
- 2026Distilling Physical Priors into Streaming World Models8 Aug 2026
- 2026Phys4D: Fine-Grained Physics-Consistent 4D Modeling from Video Diffusion3 Mar 2026
- 2026Physics in 2-Steps: Locking Motion Priors Before Visual Refinement Erases Themcited by 3
- 2026Seeking Physics in Diffusion Noisecited by 1
- 2026Physics in 2-Steps: Locking Motion Priors Before Visual Refinement Erases Them4 Jun 2026
- 2026Seeking Physics in Diffusion Noise15 Mar 2026
- 2026Self-Refining Video Samplingcited by 15
- 2025Endless World: Real-Time 3D-Aware Long Video Generationcited by 4
- 2026Pretrained Video Models as Differentiable Physics Simulators for Urban Wind Flowscited by 2
- 2026Video Generation Models: A Survey of Post-Training and Alignmentcited by 0
- 2026Video Generation Models: A Survey of Post-Training and Alignment30 Sep 2026
- 2026Pretrained Video Models as Differentiable Physics Simulators for Urban Wind Flows22 Mar 2026
- 2026Self-Refining Video Sampling26 Jan 2026
- 2025Endless World: Real-Time 3D-Aware Long Video Generation13 Dec 2025
Similar, not cited
Close in wording, no citation either way
- 2026The Invisible Hand of Physics: When Video Diffusion Models Know More Than They Show
- 2026PhyCo: Learning Controllable Physical Priors for Generative Motion
- 2026Why Do Video Diffusion Models Violate Physics? Unveiling the Flaws in Attention Mechanisms
- 2026SIFT: Self-Imagination Fine-Tuning for Physically Plausible Motion in Video Diffusion Models
- 2023MeDM: Mediating Image Diffusion Models for Video-to-Video Translation with Temporal Correspondence Guidance
- 2026PhyRPR: Training-Free Physics-Constrained Video Generation
- 2026CausalMotion: Structured Physical Reasoning as Keyframe and Trajectory Guidance for Training-Free Video Generation
- 2025PhyVLLM: Physics-Guided Video Language Model with Motion-Appearance Disentanglement