mlsanityData to 7 Oct 2026

Kimodo: Scaling Controllable Human Motion Generation

arXiv 2603.15546 ↗First posted 16 Mar 2026cs.CV cs.GR cs.ROcited by 33

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Abstract (arXiv)

High-quality human motion data is becoming increasingly important for applications in robotics, simulation, and entertainment. Recent generative models offer a potential data source, enabling human motion synthesis through intuitive inputs like text prompts or kinematic constraints on poses. However, the small scale of public mocap datasets has limited the motion quality, control accuracy, and generalization of these models. In this work, we introduce Kimodo, an expressive and controllable kinematic motion diffusion model trained on 700 hours of optical motion capture data. Our model generates high-quality motions while being easily controlled through text and a comprehensive suite of kinematic constraints including full-body keyframes, sparse joint positions/rotations, 2D waypoints, and dense 2D paths. This is enabled through a carefully designed motion representation and two-stage denoiser architecture that decomposes root and body prediction to minimize motion artifacts while allowing for flexible constraint conditioning. Experiments on the large-scale mocap dataset justify key design decisions and analyze how the scaling of dataset size and model size affect performance.

Key facts. Cited by 33 papers in the map (data through 7 Oct 2026). Builds on 45 of its 54 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 16 Mar 2026.

Builds on

45 of 54 references.

References · 45

  1. 2021Learning Transferable Visual Models From Natural Language Supervisioncited by 33,456
  2. 2020Denoising Diffusion Probabilistic Modelscited by 20,851
  3. 2019Exploring the Limits of Transfer Learning with a Unified Text-to-Text Transformercited by 14,491
  4. 2020Denoising Diffusion Implicit Modelscited by 9,655
  5. 2022Classifier-Free Diffusion Guidancecited by 5,717
  6. 2023Adding Conditional Control to Text-to-Image Diffusion Modelscited by 5,466
  7. 2017Neural Discrete Representation Learningcited by 4,650
  8. 2015Fast R-CNNcited by 2,930
  9. 2019Expressive Body Capture: 3D Hands, Face, and Body from a Single Imagecited by 1,600
  10. 2019AMASS: Archive of Motion Capture as Surface Shapescited by 1,208
  11. 2018On the Continuity of Rotation Representations in Neural Networkscited by 1,186
  12. 2022Human Motion Diffusion Modelcited by 1,062
33 more
  1. 2023Vision Transformers Need Registerscited by 844
  2. 2022MotionDiffuse: Text-Driven Human Motion Generation with Diffusion Modelcited by 768
  3. 2023T2M-GPT: Generating Human Motion from Textual Descriptions with Discrete Representationscited by 577
  4. 2022Executing your Commands via Motion Diffusion in Latent Spacecited by 567
  5. 2023MotionGPT: Human Motion as a Foreign Languagecited by 521
  6. 2024LLM2Vec: Large Language Models Are Secretly Powerful Text Encoderscited by 396
  7. 2023MoMask: Generative Masked Modeling of 3D Human Motionscited by 388
  8. 2023Human Motion Diffusion as a Generative Priorcited by 354
  9. 2016The KIT Motion-Language Datasetcited by 334
  10. 2023OmniControl: Control Any Joint at Any Time for Human Motion Generationcited by 233
  11. 2023Guided Motion Diffusion for Controllable Human Motion Synthesiscited by 221
  12. 2023Motion-X: A Large-scale 3D Expressive Whole-body Human Motion Datasetcited by 220
  13. 2023TMR: Text-to-Motion Retrieval Using Contrastive 3D Human Motion Synthesiscited by 194
  14. 2023Trace and Pace: Controllable Pedestrian Animation via Guided Trajectory Diffusioncited by 137
  15. 2023MMM: Generative Masked Motion Modelcited by 129
  16. 2024MaskedMimic: Unified Physics-Based Character Control Through Masked Motion Inpaintingcited by 101
  17. 2023TLControl: Trajectory and Language Control for Human Motion Synthesiscited by 93
  18. 2025TWIST: Teleoperated Whole-Body Imitation Systemcited by 86
  19. 2025SONIC: Supersizing Motion Tracking for Natural Humanoid Whole-Body Controlcited by 83
  20. 2024DartControl: A Diffusion-Based Autoregressive Motion Model for Real-Time Text-Driven Motion Controlcited by 80
  21. 2024Scaling Exponents Across Parameterizations and Optimizerscited by 71
  22. 2024Flexible Motion In-betweening with Diffusion Modelscited by 69
  23. 2025Go to Zero: Towards Zero-shot Motion Generation with Million-scale Datacited by 67
  24. 2024Large Motion Model for Unified Multi-Modal Motion Generationcited by 65
  25. 2023Interactive Character Control with Auto-Regressive Motion Diffusion Modelscited by 52
  26. 2024ScaMo: Exploring the Scaling Law in Autoregressive Motion Generation Modelcited by 52
  27. 2025GENMO: A GENeralist Model for Human MOtioncited by 43
  28. 2024MaskControl: Spatio-Temporal Control for Masked Motion Synthesiscited by 37
  29. 2025HY-Motion 1.0: Scaling Flow Matching Models for Text-To-Motion Generationcited by 32
  30. 2025Absolute Coordinates Make Motion Generation Easycited by 27
  31. 2025The Quest for Generalizable Motion Generation: Data, Model, and Evaluationcited by 20
  32. 2025Viser: Imperative, Web-based 3D Visualization in Pythoncited by 19
  33. 2025Motion Synthesis with Sparse and Flexible Keyjoint Controlcited by 9

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Cited by year (2026 to 7 Oct)

Citing papers per year: 2026: 33.

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  1. 2026Marionette: Predicting World States, Rendering Geometry, Painting Appearancecited by 5
  2. 2026SCRIPT: Scalable Diffusion Policy with Multi-stage Training for Language-driven Physics-Based Humanoid Controlcited by 4
  3. 2026SentiAvatar: Towards Expressive and Interactive Digital Humanscited by 3
  4. 2026TEXEDO : Test Time Scaling for Controller-aware Language-conditioned Humanoid Motion Generationcited by 3
  5. 2026Asset Harvester: Extracting 3D Assets from Autonomous Driving Logs for Simulationcited by 2
  6. 2026A Unified Conditional Flow for Motion Generation, Editing, and Intra-Structural Retargetingcited by 1
  7. 2026UMo: Unified Sparse Motion Modeling for Real-Time Co-Speech Avatarscited by 1
  8. 2026MIND: Multi-Scale Intent Diffusion for Text-Driven Physics-Based Humanoid Controlcited by 1
  9. 2026AnyMo: Scaling Any-Modality Conditional Motion Generation with Masked Modelingcited by 1
  10. 2026GenTrack: Physical Alignment for Robot-Native Motion Generation and Zero-Shot Humanoid Trackingcited by 1
  11. 2026TAPVid-MV: A Benchmark for Tracking Any Point in 3D Across Multiple Viewscited by 1
  12. 2026DanceCrafter: Fine-Grained Text-Driven Controllable Dance Generation via Choreographic Syntaxcited by 0
21 more
  1. 2026SCAMP: Sparse-anchor Control is One Small Projectioncited by 0
  2. 2026AnyAct: Towards Human Reenactment of Character Motion From Videocited by 0
  3. 2026Plan, Don't Pose: Long Composite Motion Generation with Text-Aligned BFMcited by 0
  4. 2026Controllable Dynamic 3D Shape Generation via 3D Trajectories and Textcited by 0
  5. 2026Real-time body pose non-verbal communication with a consistency-based reliability measurecited by 0
  6. 2026Per-Stroke Temporal Control for Text-to-Motion via Action Units and Action-Detection Guidancecited by 0
  7. 2026Direct Clinical Joint Angle Extraction from Parametric Body Model Rotation Matricescited by 0
  8. 2026MIME: Multimodal Interactive Motion Encodercited by 0
  9. 2026Two2Four: Generative Quadruped Puppeteering from Human Motioncited by 0
  10. 2026Learning to Understand Body Language from Flight through Robust 3D Avatar Placingcited by 0
  11. 2026UniMate: One Unified Model to Animate Diverse Skeletonscited by 0
  12. 2026Weave: Learning Whole-Body Dexterous Loco-Manipulation from Human-Object Interactionscited by 0
  13. 2026Generative Embodied Multiple Behavior Control Systems for Human-like Agentscited by 0
  14. 2026Sample, Simulate, Select: Physics-in-the-Loop Text-to-Motion for Humanoids Without Trainingcited by 0
  15. 2026NavSafe-∞: Benchmarking Closed-Loop Driving Safety in Photorealistic Environmentscited by 0
  16. 2026FloodDiffusion 2: Efficient and Path Controllable Streaming Motion Generationcited by 0
  17. 2026MotionSpaceFlow: Representation-Aware Flow Matching in Direct Motion Spacecited by 0
  18. 2026World2Motion: Turning Video World Models into 3D Human Motion Generatorscited by 0
  19. 2026AESOP: Asymmetric Human-Camera Generation with Translation-Intensity Controlcited by 0
  20. 2026Controllable Exaggeration for Generative Motion Models via Training-Time Adaptation and Inference-Time Guidancecited by 0
  21. 2026CSF: Contextual Safety Filtering for Motion Generatorscited by 0

Similar, not cited

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  1. 2022Pretrained Diffusion Models for Unified Human Motion Synthesis
  2. 2024StableMoFusion: Towards Robust and Efficient Diffusion-based Motion Generation Framework
  3. 2024FreeMotion: MoCap-Free Human Motion Synthesis with Multimodal Large Language Models
  4. 2024Towards motion from video diffusion models
  5. 2025Strong and Controllable 3D Motion Generation
  6. 2026Spatiotemporally Decoupled Autoregressive Diffusion Model for Human Motion Generation
  7. 2026RoboDream: Compositional World Models for Scalable Robot Data Synthesis
  8. 2023Motion Flow Matching for Human Motion Synthesis and Editing