mlsanityData to 7 Oct 2026

Sculpt4D: Generating 4D Shapes via Sparse-Attention Diffusion Transformers

arXiv 2604.21592 ↗First posted 23 Apr 2026cs.CVcited by 3

On the map: Diffusion models → 3D, point cloud and scene generation

Abstract (arXiv)

Recent breakthroughs in 3D generative modeling have yielded remarkable progress in static shape synthesis, yet high-fidelity dynamic 4D generation remains elusive, hindered by temporal artifacts and prohibitive computational demand. We present Sculpt4D, a native 4D generative framework that seamlessly integrates efficient temporal modeling into a pretrained 3D Diffusion Transformer (Hunyuan3D 2.1), thereby mitigating the scarcity of 4D training data. At its core lies a Block Sparse Attention mechanism that preserves object identity by anchoring to the initial frame while capturing rich motion dynamics via a time-decaying sparse mask. This design faithfully models complex spatiotemporal dependencies with high fidelity, while sidestepping the quadratic overhead of full attention and reducing network total computation by 56%. Consequently, Sculpt4D establishes a new state-of-the-art in temporally coherent 4D synthesis and charts a path toward efficient and scalable 4D generation.

Key facts. Cited by 3 papers in the map (data through 7 Oct 2026). Placed in 3D, point cloud and scene generation, one of 14 directions in Diffusion models. Builds on 62 of its 68 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 23 Apr 2026.

Builds on

62 of 68 references.

Closest ancestors · 27

Same direction, newest first

  1. 2025Gaussian Variation Field Diffusion for High-fidelity Video-to-4D Synthesis31 Jul
  2. 2025Step1X-3D: Towards High-Fidelity and Controllable Generation of Textured 3D Assets12 May
  3. 2025Hunyuan3D 2.0: Scaling Diffusion Models for High Resolution Textured 3D Assets Generation21 Jan
  4. 20244Real-Video: Learning Generalizable Photo-Realistic 4D Video Diffusion5 Dec
  5. 2024CAT4D: Create Anything in 4D with Multi-View Video Diffusion Models27 Nov
  6. 2024DimensionX: Create Any 3D and 4D Scenes from a Single Image with Controllable Video Diffusion7 Nov
  7. 2024SV4D: Dynamic 3D Content Generation with Multi-Frame and Multi-View Consistency24 Jul
  8. 2024Animate3D: Animating Any 3D Model with Multi-view Video Diffusion16 Jul
  9. 2024RodinHD: High-Fidelity 3D Avatar Generation with Diffusion Models9 Jul
  10. 20244Real: Towards Photorealistic 4D Scene Generation via Video Diffusion Models11 Jun
  11. 20244Diffusion: Multi-view Video Diffusion Model for 4D Generation31 May
  12. 2024EG4D: Explicit Generation of 4D Object without Score Distillation28 May
15 more
  1. 2024Diffusion4D: Fast Spatial-temporal Consistent 4D Generation via Video Diffusion Models26 May
  2. 2024Diffusion2: Dynamic 3D Content Generation via Score Composition of Video and Multi-view Diffusion Models2 Apr
  3. 2024STAG4D: Spatial-Temporal Anchored Generative 4D Gaussians22 Mar
  4. 2023Align Your Gaussians: Text-to-4D with Dynamic 3D Gaussians and Composed Diffusion Models21 Dec
  5. 2023VolumeDiffusion: Flexible Text-to-3D Generation with Efficient Volumetric Encoder18 Dec
  6. 2023Mosaic-SDF for 3D Generative Models14 Dec
  7. 2023PrimDiffusion: Volumetric Primitives Diffusion for 3D Human Generation7 Dec
  8. 2023A Unified Approach for Text- and Image-guided 4D Scene Generation28 Nov
  9. 2023Animate124: Animating One Image to 4D Dynamic Scene24 Nov
  10. 2023Large-Vocabulary 3D Diffusion Model with Transformer14 Sep
  11. 20233DShape2VecSet: A 3D Shape Representation for Neural Fields and Generative Diffusion Models26 Jan
  12. 2022Rodin: A Generative Model for Sculpting 3D Digital Avatars Using Diffusion12 Dec
  13. 2022DiffRF: Rendering-Guided 3D Radiance Field Diffusion2 Dec
  14. 20223D Neural Field Generation using Triplane Diffusion30 Nov
  15. 2022DreamFusion: Text-to-3D using 2D Diffusion29 Sep

Other references · 35

  1. 2023DINOv2: Learning Robust Visual Features without Supervisioncited by 7,764
  2. 2022Scalable Diffusion Models with Transformerscited by 5,931
  3. 2021RoFormer: Enhanced Transformer with Rotary Position Embeddingcited by 4,581
  4. 2017Outrageously Large Neural Networks: The Sparsely-Gated Mixture-of-Experts Layercited by 3,413
  5. 2020Longformer: The Long-Document Transformercited by 3,362
  6. 2023Efficient Streaming Language Models with Attention Sinkscited by 2,115
  7. 2022Objaverse: A Universe of Annotated 3D Objectscited by 1,522
  8. 2019Root Mean Square Layer Normalizationcited by 1,425
  9. 2021Efficient Geometry-aware 3D Generative Adversarial Networkscited by 1,204
  10. 2023Objaverse-XL: A Universe of 10M+ 3D Objectscited by 767
  11. 2024Structured 3D Latents for Scalable and Versatile 3D Generationcited by 742
  12. 2016Learning a Probabilistic Latent Space of Object Shapes via 3D Generative-Adversarial Modelingcited by 558
23 more
  1. 2022GET3D: A Generative Model of High Quality 3D Textured Shapes Learned from Imagescited by 446
  2. 2025Native Sparse Attention: Hardware-Aligned and Natively Trainable Sparse Attentioncited by 391
  3. 2021GRAM: Generative Radiance Manifolds for 3D-Aware Image Generationcited by 216
  4. 2023Text-To-4D Dynamic Scene Generationcited by 204
  5. 2023DreamGaussian4D: Generative 4D Gaussian Splattingcited by 191
  6. 20234D-fy: Text-to-4D Generation Using Hybrid Score Distillation Samplingcited by 184
  7. 2025Hunyuan3D 2.1: From Images to High-Fidelity 3D Assets with Production-Ready PBR Materialcited by 157
  8. 2024L4GM: Large 4D Gaussian Reconstruction Modelcited by 143
  9. 2018Visual Object Networks: Image Generation with Disentangled 3D Representationcited by 124
  10. 2023Consistent4D: Consistent 360deg Dynamic Object Generation from Monocular Videocited by 124
  11. 2025Direct3D-S2: Gigascale 3D Generation Made Easy with Spatial Sparse Attentioncited by 103
  12. 2022SDF-StyleGAN: Implicit SDF-Based StyleGAN for 3D Shape Generationcited by 92
  13. 2022GRAM-HD: 3D-Consistent Image Generation at High Resolution with Generative Radiance Manifoldscited by 73
  14. 2025Radial Attention: O(nlog n) Sparse Attention with Energy Decay for Long Video Generationcited by 64
  15. 2023GAvatar: Animatable 3D Gaussian Avatars with Implicit Mesh Learningcited by 63
  16. 2024DreamMesh4D: Video-to-4D Generation with Sparse-Controlled Gaussian-Mesh Hybrid Representationcited by 58
  17. 2024GVGEN: Text-to-3D Generation with Volumetric Representationcited by 51
  18. 20233D generation on ImageNetcited by 47
  19. 2024GaussianCube: A Structured and Explicit Radiance Representation for 3D Generative Modelingcited by 44
  20. 2024Vivid-ZOO: Multi-View Video Generation with Diffusion Modelcited by 40
  21. 2025V2M4: 4D Mesh Animation Reconstruction from a Single Monocular Videocited by 32
  22. 2025ShapeGen4D: Towards High Quality 4D Shape Generation from Videoscited by 20
  23. 2025Splat4D: Diffusion-Enhanced 4D Gaussian Splatting for Temporally and Spatially Consistent Content Creationcited by 8

Built on by

Cited by year (2026 to 7 Oct)

Citing papers per year: 2026: 3.

3 papers.

Similar, not cited

Close in wording, no citation either way

  1. 2025Diff4Splat: Controllable 4D Scene Generation with Latent Dynamic Reconstruction Models
  2. 20254DNeX: Feed-Forward 4D Generative Modeling Made Easy
  3. 2024Learning Coherent Matrixized Representation in Latent Space for Volumetric 4D Generation
  4. 2026Orthogonal Spatial-temporal Distributional Transfer for 4D Generation
  5. 2026Alignment Is All You Need For X-to-4D Generation
  6. 2026Turbo4DGen: Ultra-Fast Acceleration for 4D Generation
  7. 2026Beyond Pixels: From Video Priors to 4D Worlds
  8. 2025TriDiff-4D: Fast 4D Generation through Diffusion-based Triplane Re-posing