Authors: Yi Yang, Yuren Cong, Hao Cheng, Bodo Rosenhahn, Michael Ying Yang
Organizations: Institute of Information Processing, Leibniz University Hannover, Germany. · Faculty of Geo-Information Science and Earth Observation, University of Twente, The Netherlands. · Department of Computer Science and Research Centre for Spatial Intelligence (RCSI), University of Bath, UK.
Dynamic scene graph generation extends scene graph generation from images to videos by modeling entity relationships and their temporal evolution. However, existing methods either generate scene graphs from observed frames without explicitly modeling temporal dynamics or predict only relationships while assuming static entity labels and locations. These limitations hinder effective extrapolation of both entity and relationship dynamics, restricting video scene understanding. We propose Forecasting Dynamic Scene Graphs (FDSG), a novel framework that predicts future entity labels, bounding boxes, and relationships, for unobserved frames while also generating scene graphs for observed frames. Our scene graph forecast module leverages query decomposition and neural stochastic differential equations to model entity and relationship dynamics. A temporal aggregation module further refines predictions by integrating observed and forecasted information via cross-attention. To benchmark FDSG, we introduce Scene Graph Forecasting, a new task for full future scene graph prediction. Extensive experiments on Action Genome and VidOR show that FDSG outperforms state-of-the-art methods on dynamic scene graph generation, scene graph anticipation, and scene graph forecasting. Codes will be released upon publication.
Figures & tables
Fig. 1 : Comparison between existing tasks and our FDSG framework. (a) DSGG generates scene graphs and entity bounding boxes from observed video. (b) SGA predicts scene graphs without bounding boxes for future unobserved video. In contrast, FDSG forecasts complete scene graphs, including both (b) relationships, and (c) entity labels with bounding boxes in the future. FDSG also (d) aggregates observed-frame information to enhance both generation and forecasting. Our FDSG employs a one-stage end-to-end design, without explicit object tracking, and incorporates forecasting error as an auxiliary loss, enabling joint learning of DSGG and SGA .
Symbol
Description
Video and Time
Vt
Video frame at time t
H
Total number of frames (time horizon)
Scene Graphs
ot(k)
Entity k at frame t
ct(k)∈C
Entity category label
TABLE 1: Summary of key notation used throughout the method section.
Fig. 2 : Illustration of the proposed SGF task.
Fig. 3 : Our FDSG Framework carries out Dynamic Scene Graph Generation ( DSGG ) and Scene Graph Forecasting ( SGF ) simultaneously to fully exploit temporal dependencies. Video features are extracted using a CNN backbone and a DINO encoder. Then, (a) Scene Graph Generation Module generates scene graph representations for each observed frame. Subsequently, (b) Forecast Module forecasts a scene graph from a reference frame (gray representations) to the target frame (orange representations). Finally, (c) Temporal Aggregation Module aggregates information from DSGG and SGF to jointly enhance model performance. The output enhanced scene graph representations are shown in dark green.
Task
Protocol
Observation / Prediction Window
Input
Evaluated Output
Input
Reference
Output
Video
Entity Label
Entity BBox
Entity Label
Entity BBox
Predicate
DSGG
PredCLS
1 → H
1 → H
1 → H
✓
✓
✓
GT
GT
✓
SGCLS
✓
-
✓
✓
GT
✓
SGDET
✓
-
-
✓
✓
✓
SGA
GAGS
1 → T
1 → T
T+1 → H
✓
✓
✓
×
×
✓
PGAGS
✓
-
✓
TABLE 2: Comparison of evaluation settings for tasks DSGG , SGA and SGF . GT means the output uses ground truth from the input and is therefore not evaluated.
SGDET, IoU≥0.5
Recall@K (R@K) ↑
Mean Recall@K (mR@K) ↑
With Constraint
No Constraint
With Constraint
No Constraint
Method
10
20
50
10
20
50
10
20
50
10
20
50
RelDN [ 47 ]
9.1
9.1
9.1
13.6
23.0
36.6
3.3
3.3
3.3
7.5
18.8
33.7
VCTree [ 48 ]
24.4
32.6
34.7
23.9
35.3
46.8
-
-
-
-
-
-
TRACE [ 8 ]
13.9
14.5
14.5
26.5
35.6
45.3
8.2
8.2
8.2
22.8
31.3
41.8
GPS-Net [ 23 ]
24.7
33.1
35.1
24.4
35.7
47.3
-
-
-
-
-
-
TABLE 3: Comparison with state-of-the-art Dynamic Scene Graph Generation ( DSGG ) methods on Action Genome for Scene Graph Detection (SGDET). Best values are highlighted in boldface .
SGCLS
Recall@K (R@K) ↑
Mean Recall@K (mR@K) ↑
With Constraint
No Constraint
With Constraint
No Constraint
Method
10
20
50
10
20
50
10
20
50
10
20
50
RelDN [ 47 ]
44.3
45.4
45.4
52.9
62.4
65.1
3.3
3.3
3.3
7.5
18.8
33.7
VCTree [ 48 ]
44.1
45.3
45.3
52.4
62.0
65.1
-
-
-
-
-
-
TRACE [ 8 ]
-
45.7
46.8
-
-
-
8.9
8.9
8.9
31.9
42.7
46.3
GPS-Net [ 23 ]
45.3
46.5
46.5
53.6
63.3
66.0
-
-
-
-
-
-
TABLE 4: Comparison with state-of-the-art Dynamic Scene Graph Generation methods on Action Genome for Scene Graph Classification (SGCLS) . Best and second-best values are highlighted in boldface and underlined , respectively.
PredCLS
Recall@K (R@K) ↑
Mean Recall@K (mR@K) ↑
With Constraint
No Constraint
With Constraint
No Constraint
Method
10
20
50
10
20
50
10
20
50
10
20
50
RelDN [ 47 ]
66.3
69.5
69.5
75.7
93.0
99.0
6.2
6.2
6.2
31.2
63.1
75.5
VCTree [ 48 ]
66.0
69.3
69.3
75.5
92.9
99.3
-
-
-
-
-
-
TRACE [ 8 ]
27.5
27.5
27.5
72.6
91.6
96.4
15.2
15.2
15.2
50.9
73.6
82.7
GPS-Net [ 23 ]
66.8
69.9
69.9
76.0
93.6
99.5
-
-
-
-
-
-
TABLE 5: Comparison with state-of-the-art Dynamic Scene Graph Generation methods on Action Genome for Predicate Classification (PredCLS) . Best and second-best values are highlighted in boldface and underlined , respectively.
Protocol
Method
Recall (R@K) ↑
Mean Recall (mR@K) ↑
With Constraint
No Constraint
With Constraint
No Constraint
10
20
50
10
20
50
10
20
50
10
20
50
AGS
F=0.5
STTran++ [ 6 , 16 ]
19.7
30.2
31.8
16.6
29.1
51.5
6.3
11.3
12.3
6.6
14.7
33.4
DSG-DETR++ [ 32 , 16 ]
20.7
30.3
31.6
17.4
30.5
51.9
6.4
11.0
11.7
8.4
17.0
33.9
SceneSayerODE [ 16 ]
25.9
32.6
34.8
26.4
36.6
49.8
11.6
15.2
16.4
14.3
21.4
36.0
SceneSayerSDE [ 16 ]
27.3
34.8
37.0
28.4
38.6
51.4
12.4
16.6
18.0
16.3
25.1
39.9
TABLE 6: Comparison with state-of-the-art Scene Graph Anticipation methods on Action Genome Scenes (AGS), Partially Grounded Action Genome Scenes (PGAGS), and Grounded Action Genome Scenes (PGAGS). Best and second-best values are highlighted in boldface and underlined , respectively.
F
Method
Recall@K (R@K) ↑
Mean Recall@K (mR@K) ↑
With Constraint
No Constraint
With Constraint
No Constraint
10
20
50
10
20
50
10
20
50
10
20
50
0.3
SceneSayerODE+ [ 16 ]
3.6
4.3
4.4
3.8
4.6
5.3
2.4
2.9
2.9
2.8
3.2
3.9
SceneSayerSDE+ [ 16 ]
4.3
4.7
5.1
4.5
5.3
6.2
2.5
3.5
3.5
2.9
4.0
4.7
FDSG (ours)
9.2
11.4
13.1
10.2
13.1
16.2
7.6
9.7
11.3
9.2
14.2
18.5
0.5
SceneSayerODE+ [ 16 ]
4.8
5.4
5.4
5.1
6.3
6.9
2.3
3.0
3.0
2.6
3.9
4.4
TABLE 7: Comparison with baseline methods on Action Genome for the Scene Graph Forecasting ( SGF ) task. Best values are highlighted in boldface .
Observed Fraction F
Object Detection Recall R@20 ↑
AP50 ↑
SGA (IoU ≥ 0)
SGF (IoU ≥ 0.5)
Baseline
Oracle
Ours
Baseline
Oracle
Ours
Baseline
Oracle
Ours
0.3
77.00
77.05
81.57
37.07
39.23
40.67
8.7
13.3
10.2
0.5
80.11
82.75
83.36
40.33
44.01
43.85
10.0
15.9
11.6
0.7
84.44
89.76
87.38
45.67
51.27
47.87
12.3
22.5
13.8
0.9
86.99
96.01
91.89
55.25
64.95
58.51
17.4
36.1
20.3
TABLE 8: Object detection recall and average precision (AP) for SGA and SGF with different observation fraction F .
Task
Method
Recall (R@K) ↑
Mean Recall (mR@K) ↑
With Constraint
No Constraint
With Constraint
No Constraint
10
20
50
10
20
50
10
20
50
10
20
50
DSGG
STTran [ 6 ]
19.2
21.6
27.7
22.1
27.4
31.7
5.7
6.5
8.0
6.8
7.0
8.7
SGDET
BIG-C [ 55 ]
21.6
25.9
31.3
23.3
28.9
34.6
6.6
7.2
8.4
7.4
8.8
10.7
OED [ 11 ]
24.7
28.9
33.4
26.5
30.9
35.0
6.9
8.8
10.7
8.2
10.1
13.6
FDSG (ours)
26.4
31.5
37.2
27.0
32.5
38.6
7.6
10.1
13.0
8.4
11.6
16.8
TABLE 9: Comparison with state-of-the-art methods on VidOR. Best and second-best values are highlighted in boldface and underlined , respectively.
Task
#
Method
Recall@K (R@K) ↑
Mean Recall@K (mR@K) ↑
With Constraint
No Constraint
With Constraint
No Constraint
S
T
TDM
LDM
10
20
50
10
20
50
10
20
50
10
20
50
DSGG
1
✓
33.4
41.0
48.1
35.2
45.0
54.0
19.7
25.8
30.9
24.5
38.2
52.0
2
✓
✓
34.6
42.2
49.2
36.5
46.4
55.5
21.5
27.3
33.0
26.2
39.3
50.8
3
✓
✓
✓
34.9
42.4
49.3
36.7
46.6
55.7
21.0
27.2
32.0
26.0
39.5
52.5
4
✓
✓
33.4
41.2
48.3
35.3
45.1
54.2
19.7
25.8
30.9
24.8
38.3
52.2
TABLE 10: Ablation study of model components with recall and mean recall metrics. For Dynamic Scene Graph Generation ( DSGG ) and Scene Graph Forecasting ( SGF ), the task is SGDET, while for Scene Graph Anticipation ( SGA ), the task is AGS. For SGA and SGF , the observed fraction F=0.5 . Notations for the model components: S - Static SGG Module; T - Temporal Aggregation Module; TDM - Triplet Dynamics Model; LDM - Location Dynamics Model. Best values are highlighted in boldface .
Task
LDM
Recall (With Constraint) ↑
R@10
R@20
R@50
DSGG
IM
35.3
42.8
49.9
MLP
35.4
43.0
50.0
SGDET
Decoder
35.3
43.2
50.4
NeuralODE
34.8
42.4
49.4
NeuralSDE
34.9
42.6
49.3
TABLE 11: Comparison of different realizations for a Location Dynamics Model (LDM). IM denotes the Identity Mapping.
Task
Method
Recall (With Constraint) ↑
10
20
50
DSGG
(a)
35.0
42.4
49.3
(b)
34.7
42.0
49.0
Ours
35.3
42.9
49.8
SGA
(a)
25.9
32.6
39.8
(b)
28.1
35.7
43.4
TABLE 12: Comparison between different temporal aggregation strategies. (a) aggregating forecasts before observations; (b) aggregating both information in a single cross-attention layer. Best values are highlighted in boldface .
F
Method
Recall (R@K) ↑
With Constraint
No Constraint
10
20
50
10
20
50
0.3
FAR + OED
8.1
10.5
12.7
10.0
12.8
15.5
FDSG (ours)
9.2
11.4
13.1
10.2
13.1
16.2
0.5
FAR + OED
10.5
13.2
16.4
11.6
15.7
20.0
FDSG (ours)
10.6
13.3
15.5
12.0
15.5
18.8
TABLE 13: Performance comparison between FDSG and video forecasting pipeline FAR+OED on SGF with Action Genome. Best values are highlighted in boldface .
Fig. 4 : Visualization of Dynamic Scene Graph Generation ( DSGG ) and Scene Graph Forecasting ( SGF ) outputs from our FDSG. The first two rows show frames with ground truth entity bounding boxes and ground truth scene graphs, while the last two rows show generated scene graphs from DSGG (left) and SGF (right). In the scene graphs, incorrect predicates are highlighted with text in red, while entities/predicates with missing labels in the ground truth are highlighted in orange.
Fig. 5 : Visualization of triplet status transitions on Action Genome (left) and VidOR (right). Forecasted triplets that match to ground truth are the foreground, while the other triplets are the background. On both datasets the triplets are observed to predict new predicates/subjects/objects.
Fig. 6 : Visualization of sampling points of the Deformable Attention in the last Cross-Attention layer of FDSG’s entity decoder for the DSGG task. A brighter color indicates a larger attention weight associated with the sampling point. We also label the detected triplets and the bounding boxes.
Fig. 7 : Visualization of Dynamic Scene Graph Generation ( DSGG ) and Scene Graph Forecasting ( SGF ) outputs from our FDSG. The first two rows show frames with ground truth entity bounding boxes and ground truth scene graphs, while the last two rows show generated scene graphs from DSGG (left) and SGF (right). In the scene graphs, incorrect predicates are highlighted with text in red, while entities/predicates with missing labels in the ground truth are highlighted in orange.
Dynamic Scene Graph Generation (DSGG) aims to capture objects and their evolving relations in videos. Despite recent progress, the practicality and quality of generated scene graphs remain limited compared to the rapid advances in Multimodal Large Language Models (MLLMs). In this work, we revisit DSGG from two fundamental perspectives: task setup and model design. From the task setup perspective, we identify two key limitations of the current recall-oriented evaluation protocol: (i) a severe precision-recall trade-off, and (ii) uninformative and redundant relation generation. To better assess practical usefulness, we introduce five additional metrics that provide a more comprehensive evaluation of the quality of generated dynamic scene graphs. From the model design perspective, we explore directly using MLLMs for scene graph generation and establish a strong MLLM-based DSGG baseline through three design changes. First, we replace the conventional bottom-up pipeline with a top-down reason-then-locate strategy. Second, we reformulate frame-wise dynamic graphs as Temporal Relation Set (TRS) prediction, improving both efficiency and performance. Third, we introduce Importance-Aware Finetuning (IAF) to encourage more relevant and diverse relation generation. Extensive experiments on Action Genome, VidVRD, and PVSG show that our approach consistently achieves state-of-the-art performance.
Scene graph generation provides a compact structured representation for visual perception, but accurate and fast graph prediction from images and videos remains challenging. Recent VLM-based methods can generate scene graphs end-to-end as structured text, yet often produce long outputs with irrelevant objects and relations. We present SceneGraphVLM, a compact method for image and video scene graph generation with small visual language models. SceneGraphVLM serializes graphs in a token-efficient TOON format and trains the model in two stages: supervised fine-tuning followed by reinforcement learning with hallucination-aware rewards that balance relation coverage and precision while penalizing unsupported objects and relations. For videos, the model can optionally condition each frame on the previously generated graph, providing lightweight short-term context without tracking or post-processing. We evaluate SceneGraphVLM on PSG, PVSG, and Action Genome. With compact VLMs and vLLM-accelerated decoding, SceneGraphVLM achieves a strong quality-speed trade-off, improves precision-oriented SGG metrics while preserving reasonable recall, and generates complete scene graphs with approximately one-second latency. Code and implementation details are available at: https://github.com/markus0440/SceneGraphVLM.git.
Dynamic scene graphs (DSGs) capture spatio-temporal interactions across videos as ⟨subject, predicate, object⟩ triplets, and underpin downstream tasks such as video captioning, video question answering, and action analysis. However, end-to-end dynamic scene graph generation (DSGG) methods are closed-set: they recognize only objects and predicates from a fixed training vocabulary and struggle with the long-tailed distribution of rare concepts, severely limiting their real-world applicability. Existing open-vocabulary models typically inherit pretrained large language models, resulting in multi-stage training and inference with substantial cost. We introduce OvDSGG, the first end-to-end framework for open-vocabulary DSGG. OvDSGG builds on top of an open-vocabulary Spatial Backbone and a Temporal Backbone; we further propose a Triplet Feature Extraction Module that bridges them, and a Visual-Language Alignment Module that preserves open-vocabulary recognition by learning an adaptive decision boundary in the joint visual-language feature space, without expensive knowledge distillation in existing methods. We further introduce a rigorous open-vocabulary DSGG benchmark adapted from Action Genome, with disjoint Base/Novel splits for both objects and predicates. OvDSGG significantly outperforms open-vocabulary baselines across all metrics, with zero-shot Recall@K scores 10.0--20.4 percentage point higher than the next-best baseline, while on closed-set DSGG remaining competitive with state-of-the-art models. Code and benchmark are publicly available at https://github.com/jhelsby/OvDSGG/.
John Helsby, Yi Yang, Bodo Rosenhahn +1
University of Bath, UK · Leibniz Universität Hannover, Germany