# Guiding Diffusion-Based Articulated Object Generation by Partial Point Cloud Alignment and Physical Plausibility Constraints

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2508.00558 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2508.00558/

## Key facts

- Cited by 8 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Placed in Video generation, one of 14 directions in Diffusion models.
- Builds on 19 of its 24 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 1 Aug 2025.

## Placed in

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

## Builds on (most cited first, 19 of 19)

- [Denoising Diffusion Probabilistic Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2006.11239/) (2020)
- [ShapeNet: An Information-Rich 3D Model Repository](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1512.03012/) (2015)
- [DeepSDF: Learning Continuous Signed Distance Functions for Shape Representation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1901.05103/) (2019)
- [Diffusion Posterior Sampling for General Noisy Inverse Problems](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2209.14687/) (2022)
- [SAPIEN: A SimulAted Part-based Interactive ENvironment](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2003.08515/) (2020)
- [PartNet: A Large-scale Benchmark for Fine-grained and Hierarchical Part-level 3D Object Understanding](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1812.02713/) (2018)
- [PointFlow: 3D Point Cloud Generation with Continuous Normalizing Flows](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1906.12320/) (2019)
- [Ditto: Building Digital Twins of Articulated Objects from Interaction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2202.08227/) (2022)
- [GAPartNet: Cross-Category Domain-Generalizable Object Perception and Manipulation via Generalizable and Actionable Parts](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2211.05272/) (2022)
- [PARIS: Part-level Reconstruction and Motion Analysis for Articulated Objects](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2308.07391/) (2023)
- [A-SDF: Learning Disentangled Signed Distance Functions for Articulated Shape Representation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2104.07645/) (2021)
- [URDFormer: A Pipeline for Constructing Articulated Simulation Environments from Real-World Images](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2405.11656/) (2024)
- [Articulate-Anything: Automatic Modeling of Articulated Objects via a Vision-Language Foundation Model](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.13882/) (2024)
- [Real2Code: Reconstruct Articulated Objects via Code Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.08474/) (2024)
- [SINGAPO: Single Image Controlled Generation of Articulated Parts in Objects](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.16499/) (2024)
- [CAGE: Controllable Articulation GEneration](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.09570/) (2023)
- [MeshArt: Generating Articulated Meshes with Structure-Guided Transformers](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2412.11596/) (2024)
- [PhysPart: Physically Plausible Part Completion for Interactable Objects](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2408.13724/) (2024)
- [ArtFormer: Controllable Generation of Diverse 3D Articulated Objects](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2412.07237/) (2024)

## Built on by (most cited first, 8 of 8)

- [RELIC: Interactive Video World Model with Long-Horizon Memory](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2512.04040/) (2025)
- [GaussianArt: Unified Modeling of Geometry and Motion for Articulated Objects](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2508.14891/) (2025)
- [Artiverse: A Diverse and Physically Grounded Dataset for Articulated Objects](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2605.24403/) (2026)
- [Action-guided generation of 3D functionality segmentation data](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2511.23230/) (2025)
- [NeoWorld-Pro: Programming Interactive Scenes from Monocular Images for Embodied Simulation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2608.24212/) (2026)
- [ArtHOI: Articulated Human-Object Interaction Synthesis by 4D Reconstruction from Video Priors](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.04338/) (2026)
- [FACT: Fidelity-Aware Construction of Articulated Twins](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2609.37067/) (2026)
- [Towards Physically Grounded Articulated 3D Assets: A Multi-Agent Pipeline and Benchmark](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2610.13947/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Articulated objects are an important type of interactable objects in everyday environments. In this paper, we propose PhysNAP, a novel diffusion model-based approach for generating articulated objects that aligns them with partial point clouds and improves their physical plausibility. The model represents part shapes by signed distance functions (SDFs). We guide the reverse diffusion process using a point cloud alignment loss computed using the predicted SDFs. Additionally, we impose non-penetration and mobility constraints based on the part SDFs for guiding the model to generate more physically plausible objects. We also make our diffusion approach category-aware to further improve point cloud alignment if category information is available. We evaluate the generative ability and constraint consistency of samples generated with PhysNAP using the PartNet-Mobility dataset. We also compare it with an unguided baseline diffusion model and demonstrate that PhysNAP can improve constraint consistency and provides a tradeoff with generative ability.