# DreamActor-M2: Universal Character Image Animation via Spatiotemporal In-Context Learning

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2601.21716 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2601.21716/

## Key facts

- Cited by 5 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 47 of its 61 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 29 Jan 2026.

## Builds on (most cited first, 30 of 47)

- [Language Models are Few-Shot Learners](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2005.14165/) (2020)
- [The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Deep Features as a Perceptual Metric](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1801.03924/) (2018)
- [Flamingo: a Visual Language Model for Few-Shot Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2204.14198/) (2022)
- [Scaling Rectified Flow Transformers for High-Resolution Image Synthesis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.03206/) (2024)
- [Gemini 2.5: Pushing the Frontier with Advanced Reasoning, Multimodality, Long Context, and Next Generation Agentic Capabilities](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2507.06261/) (2025)
- [Wan: Open and Advanced Large-Scale Video Generative Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.20314/) (2025)
- [Stable Video Diffusion: Scaling Latent Video Diffusion Models to Large Datasets](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.15127/) (2023)
- [CogVideoX: Text-to-Video Diffusion Models with An Expert Transformer](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2408.06072/) (2024)
- [VBench: Comprehensive Benchmark Suite for Video Generative Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.17982/) (2023)
- [HunyuanVideo: A Systematic Framework For Large Video Generative Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2412.03603/) (2024)
- [Towards Accurate Generative Models of Video: A New Metric & Challenges](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1812.01717/) (2018)
- [FLUX.1 Kontext: Flow Matching for In-Context Image Generation and Editing in Latent Space](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2506.15742/) (2025)
- [A Survey on In-context Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2301.00234/) (2022)
- [Animate Anyone: Consistent and Controllable Image-to-Video Synthesis for Character Animation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.17117/) (2023)
- [Learning To Retrieve Prompts for In-Context Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2112.08633/) (2021)
- [MagicAnimate: Temporally Consistent Human Image Animation using Diffusion Model](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.16498/) (2023)
- [Effective Whole-body Pose Estimation with Two-stages Distillation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2307.15880/) (2023)
- [Champ: Controllable and Consistent Human Image Animation with 3D Parametric Guidance](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.14781/) (2024)
- [Seedance 1.0: Exploring the Boundaries of Video Generation Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2506.09113/) (2025)
- [Motion Representations for Articulated Animation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2104.11280/) (2021)
- [MimicMotion: High-Quality Human Motion Video Generation with Confidence-aware Pose Guidance](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.19680/) (2024)
- [DreamVideo: Composing Your Dream Videos with Customized Subject and Motion](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.04433/) (2023)
- [In-Context LoRA for Diffusion Transformers](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.23775/) (2024)
- [DisCo: Disentangled Control for Realistic Human Dance Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2307.00040/) (2023)
- [MagicPose: Realistic Human Poses and Facial Expressions Retargeting with Identity-aware Diffusion](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.12052/) (2023)
- [DwNet: Dense warp-based network for pose-guided human video generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1910.09139/) (2019)
- [Animate-X: Universal Character Image Animation with Enhanced Motion Representation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.10306/) (2024)
- [StableAnimator: High-Quality Identity-Preserving Human Image Animation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2411.17697/) (2024)
- [Seaweed-7B: Cost-Effective Training of Video Generation Foundation Model](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2504.08685/) (2025)
- [Wan-Animate: Unified Character Animation and Replacement with Holistic Replication](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2509.14055/) (2025)

## Built on by (most cited first, 5 of 5)

- [SCAIL-2: Unifying Controlled Character Animation with End-to-End In-Context Conditioning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2606.10804/) (2026)
- [Wan-Animate-2: Pushing the Application Boundaries of Character Animation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2608.06009/) (2026)
- [Vorch-IR: Long-Form Unified Multimodal Identity Replacement Video Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2608.05648/) (2026)
- [WeLike2Party! In-Context Motion Transfer for Multi-Human Image Animation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2609.36937/) (2026)
- [PixReenact: Pixel-Conditioned Causal Video Diffusion for Streaming Head-Avatar Reenactment](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2610.05233/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Character image animation aims to synthesize high-fidelity videos by transferring motion from a driving sequence to a static reference image. Despite recent advancements, existing methods suffer from two fundamental challenges: (1) suboptimal motion injection strategies that lead to a trade-off between identity preservation and motion consistency, manifesting as a "see-saw", and (2) an over-reliance on explicit pose priors (e.g., skeletons), which inadequately capture intricate dynamics and hinder generalization to arbitrary, non-humanoid characters. To address these challenges, we present DreamActor-M2, a universal animation framework that reimagines motion conditioning as an in-context learning problem. Our approach follows a two-stage paradigm. First, we bridge the input modality gap by fusing reference appearance and motion cues into a unified latent space, enabling the model to jointly reason about spatial identity and temporal dynamics by leveraging the generative prior of foundational models. Second, we introduce a self-bootstrapped data synthesis pipeline that curates pseudo cross-identity training pairs, facilitating a seamless transition from pose-dependent control to direct, end-to-end RGB-driven animation. This strategy significantly enhances generalization across diverse characters and motion scenarios. To facilitate comprehensive evaluation, we further introduce AW Bench, a versatile benchmark encompassing a wide spectrum of characters types and motion scenarios. Extensive experiments demonstrate that DreamActor-M2 achieves state-of-the-art performance, delivering superior visual fidelity and robust cross-domain generalization. Project Page: https://grisoon.github.io/DreamActor-M2/