# ActionMesh: Animated 3D Mesh Generation with Temporal 3D Diffusion

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2601.16148 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2601.16148/

## Key facts

- Cited by 16 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 56 of its 59 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 22 Jan 2026.

## Builds on (most cited first, 30 of 56)

- [Attention Is All You Need](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1706.03762/) (2017)
- [High-Resolution Image Synthesis with Latent Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2112.10752/) (2021)
- [DINOv2: Learning Robust Visual Features without Supervision](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2304.07193/) (2023)
- [Scalable Diffusion Models with Transformers](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2212.09748/) (2022)
- [Flow Matching for Generative Modeling](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2210.02747/) (2022)
- [RoFormer: Enhanced Transformer with Rotary Position Embedding](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2104.09864/) (2021)
- [Flow Straight and Fast: Learning to Generate and Transfer Data with Rectified Flow](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2209.03003/) (2022)
- [FlashAttention-2: Faster Attention with Better Parallelism and Work Partitioning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2307.08691/) (2023)
- [Imagen Video: High Definition Video Generation with Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2210.02303/) (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)
- [Perceiver: General Perception with Iterative Attention](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.03206/) (2021)
- [MaskGIT: Masked Generative Image Transformer](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2202.04200/) (2022)
- [MVDream: Multi-view Diffusion for 3D Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2308.16512/) (2023)
- [LRM: Large Reconstruction Model for Single Image to 3D](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.04400/) (2023)
- [Objaverse-XL: A Universe of 10M+ 3D Objects](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2307.05663/) (2023)
- [Structured 3D Latents for Scalable and Versatile 3D Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2412.01506/) (2024)
- [LGM: Large Multi-View Gaussian Model for High-Resolution 3D Content Creation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2402.05054/) (2024)
- [3DShape2VecSet: A 3D Shape Representation for Neural Fields and Generative Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2301.11445/) (2023)
- [CLAY: A Controllable Large-scale Generative Model for Creating High-quality 3D Assets](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.13897/) (2024)
- [CAT3D: Create Anything in 3D with Multi-View Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2405.10314/) (2024)
- [MAGE: MAsked Generative Encoder to Unify Representation Learning and Image Synthesis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2211.09117/) (2022)
- [TripoSG: High-Fidelity 3D Shape Synthesis using Large-Scale Rectified Flow Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2502.06608/) (2025)
- [DreamGaussian4D: Generative 4D Gaussian Splatting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.17142/) (2023)
- [CAT4D: Create Anything in 4D with Multi-View Video Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2411.18613/) (2024)
- [L4GM: Large 4D Gaussian Reconstruction Model](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.10324/) (2024)
- [SV4D: Dynamic 3D Content Generation with Multi-Frame and Multi-View Consistency](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.17470/) (2024)
- [Consistent4D: Consistent 360deg Dynamic Object Generation from Monocular Video](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.02848/) (2023)
- [Hunyuan3D 2.5: Towards High-Fidelity 3D Assets Generation with Ultimate Details](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2506.16504/) (2025)
- [CraftsMan3D: High-fidelity Mesh Generation with 3D Native Generation and Interactive Geometry Refiner](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2405.14979/) (2024)

## Built on by (most cited first, 16 of 16)

- [One Video, One World: Turning Monocular Video into Physical 4D Scenes](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2606.31388/) (2026)
- [World Tracing: Generative Pixel-Aligned Geometry Beyond the Visible](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2606.13652/) (2026)
- [ViPS: Video-informed Pose Spaces for Auto-Rigged Meshes](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2604.17623/) (2026)
- [Lift4D: Harmonizing Single-View 3D Estimation for 4D Reconstruction In-the-Wild](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2606.23688/) (2026)
- [SMAL-pets: SMAL Based Avatars of Pets from Single Image](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.17131/) (2026)
- [Fast 4D Mesh Generation by Spatio-Temporal Attention Chains](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2605.19786/) (2026)
- [Helix4D: Complex 4D Mesh Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2605.26109/) (2026)
- [GaussiAnimate: Rig Animatable Categories with Level of Dynamics](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2604.08547/) (2026)
- [SkelMo: Universal Skeletal Motion Generation for 3D Rigged Shapes](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2606.01518/) (2026)
- [MORPHOS: Autoregressive 4D Generation with Temporal Structured Latents](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2606.02491/) (2026)
- [Controllable Dynamic 3D Shape Generation via 3D Trajectories and Text](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2606.05162/) (2026)
- [Neural Voxel Dynamics: Learning Volumetric Feature Advection for 3D Physics in V-JEPA Latent Space](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2606.26410/) (2026)
- [RegHead: Non-Humanoid Head Blendshapes via Feed-Forward Registration](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2607.12206/) (2026)
- [ScaleVid: Geometry-Aware Video Object Scaling with Mesh-Free Inference](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2608.12232/) (2026)
- [BLARM: Animating 3D Objects from Video via Blending Latent Rigid Motion Primitives](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2608.31113/) (2026)
- [Cepheid: Decoupling Scale from Structure for Cross-Family Motion Completion](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2610.18871/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Generating animated 3D objects is at the heart of many applications, yet most advanced works are typically difficult to apply in practice because of their limited setup, their long runtime, or their limited quality. We introduce ActionMesh, a generative model that predicts production-ready 3D meshes "in action" in a feed-forward manner. Drawing inspiration from early video models, our key insight is to modify existing 3D diffusion models to include a temporal axis, resulting in a framework we dubbed "temporal 3D diffusion". Specifically, we first adapt the 3D diffusion stage to generate a sequence of synchronized latents representing time-varying and independent 3D shapes. Second, we design a temporal 3D autoencoder that translates a sequence of independent shapes into the corresponding deformations of a pre-defined reference shape, allowing us to build an animation. Combining these two components, ActionMesh generates animated 3D meshes from different inputs like a monocular video, a text description, or even a 3D mesh with a text prompt describing its animation. Besides, compared to previous approaches, our method is fast and produces results that are rig-free and topology consistent, hence enabling rapid iteration and seamless applications like texturing and retargeting. We evaluate our model on standard video-to-4D benchmarks (Consistent4D, Objaverse) and report state-of-the-art performances on both geometric accuracy and temporal consistency, demonstrating that our model can deliver animated 3D meshes with unprecedented speed and quality.