# EMA: Effort Metric Attention for Anatomical Effort-Guided Human Motion Diffusion

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2605.24566 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2605.24566/

## Key facts

- No citing papers in the map yet (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Placed in Video generation, one of 14 directions in Diffusion models.
- Builds on 37 of its 63 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 23 May 2026.

## Placed in

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

## Builds on (most cited first, 30 of 37)

- [Deep Residual Learning for Image Recognition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1512.03385/) (2015)
- [BERT: Pre-training of Deep Bidirectional Transformers for Language Understanding](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1810.04805/) (2018)
- [Learning Transferable Visual Models From Natural Language Supervision](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.00020/) (2021)
- [Denoising Diffusion Probabilistic Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2006.11239/) (2020)
- [High-Resolution Image Synthesis with Latent Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2112.10752/) (2021)
- [Denoising Diffusion Implicit Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2010.02502/) (2020)
- [Layer Normalization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1607.06450/) (2016)
- [Generative Agents: Interactive Simulacra of Human Behavior](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2304.03442/) (2023)
- [Prompt-to-Prompt Image Editing with Cross Attention Control](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2208.01626/) (2022)
- [FiLM: Visual Reasoning with a General Conditioning Layer](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1709.07871/) (2017)
- [SDEdit: Guided Image Synthesis and Editing with Stochastic Differential Equations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2108.01073/) (2021)
- [Wonder3D: Single Image to 3D using Cross-Domain Diffusion](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2310.15008/) (2023)
- [T2M-GPT: Generating Human Motion from Textual Descriptions with Discrete Representations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2301.06052/) (2023)
- [Executing your Commands via Motion Diffusion in Latent Space](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2212.04048/) (2022)
- [TEMOS: Generating diverse human motions from textual descriptions](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2204.14109/) (2022)
- [Action2Motion: Conditioned Generation of 3D Human Motions](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2007.15240/) (2020)
- [HybrIK: A Hybrid Analytical-Neural Inverse Kinematics Solution for 3D Human Pose and Shape Estimation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2011.14672/) (2020)
- [OmniControl: Control Any Joint at Any Time for Human Motion Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2310.08580/) (2023)
- [InterGen: Diffusion-based Multi-human Motion Generation under Complex Interactions](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2304.05684/) (2023)
- [MV-Adapter: Multi-view Consistent Image Generation Made Easy](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2412.03632/) (2024)
- [CLoSD: Closing the Loop between Simulation and Diffusion for multi-task character control](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.03441/) (2024)
- [Move as You Say, Interact as You Can: Language-guided Human Motion Generation with Scene Affordance](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.18036/) (2024)
- [Go to Zero: Towards Zero-shot Motion Generation with Million-scale Data](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2507.07095/) (2025)
- [Motion Puzzle: Arbitrary Motion Style Transfer by Body Part](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2202.05274/) (2022)
- [MoConVQ: Unified Physics-Based Motion Control via Scalable Discrete Representations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2310.10198/) (2023)
- [SALAD: Skeleton-aware Latent Diffusion for Text-driven Motion Generation and Editing](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.13836/) (2025)
- [SMooDi: Stylized Motion Diffusion Model](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.12783/) (2024)
- [What is the Best Automated Metric for Text to Motion Generation?](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2309.10248/) (2023)
- [Style-ERD: Responsive and Coherent Online Motion Style Transfer](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2203.02574/) (2022)
- [Dance Like a Chicken: Low-Rank Stylization for Human Motion Diffusion](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.19557/) (2025)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Human motion diffusion models can synthesize action sequences from text, but controlling motion intensity remains challenging. Existing approaches rely on effort-related adverbs, which are ambiguous and fail to capture quantitative aspects such as pacing, often resulting in flat and monotonous dynamics. We propose an intensity-control framework based on Effort Metric Attention (EMA), a cross-attention module that conditions diffusion on numerical effort signals. Inspired by Laban Movement Analysis (LMA), the framework focuses on the Time and Weight effort factors. We approximate these factors using two kinematic metrics: peak joint positional change for pacing and collective joint positional change for motion amount. EMA enables fine-grained, region-wise control without costly post-hoc optimization. We introduce two evaluation tasks, metric-to-motion consistency and body-part-level effort modulation, to assess numerical fidelity and localized control. Experiments and a user study show near-monotonic alignment between specified effort levels, generated motion dynamics, and established LMA descriptors. These results indicate effective and interpretable control of effort dynamics in practice.