MotionGrounder: Grounded Multi-Object Motion Transfer via Diffusion Transformer
Organizations: School of Electrical Engineering, Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology, Daejeon, South Korea · Adobe Research, San Jose, California · CMLab, Chung-Ang University, Seoul, South Korea
Abstract
Motion transfer enables controllable video generation by transferring temporal dynamics from a reference video to synthesize a new video conditioned on a target caption. However, existing Diffusion Transformer (DiT)-based methods are limited to single-object videos, restricting fine-grained control in real-world scenes with multiple objects. In this work, we introduce MotionGrounder, a DiT-based framework that firstly handles motion transfer with multi-object controllability. Our Flow-based Motion Signal (FMS) in MotionGrounder provides a stable motion prior for target video generation, while our Object-Caption Alignment Loss (OCAL) grounds object captions to their corresponding spatial regions. We further propose a new Object Grounding Score (OGS), which jointly evaluates (i) spatial alignment between source video objects and their generated counterparts and (ii) semantic consistency between each generated object and its target caption. Our experiments show that MotionGrounder consistently outperforms recent baselines across quantitative, qualitative, and human evaluations.
Figures & tables
| Methods | DiT- | Without | Multi- | Object- | PTBM |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Based | Inversion | Object | Grounding | ||
| DMT ( Yatim et al., 2024 ) | ✗ | ✗ | Limited | ✗ | ✗ |
| MOFT ( Xiao et al., 2024 ) | ✗ | ✓ | Limited | ✗ | ✗ |
| MotionClone ( Ling et al., 2025 ) | ✗ | ✓ | Limited | ✗ | ✗ |
| ConMo ( Gao et al., 2025 ) | ✗ | ✗ | ✓ | ✗ | ✗ |
| MultiMotion ( Liu et al., 2025 ) | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✗ | ✓(Noisy) |
| Method | Caption | Subject | ||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| MF | IoU | LTA | OGS | GTA | CTC | DTC | MF | IoU | LTA | OGS | GTA | CTC | DTC | |
| DMT ( Yatim et al., 2024 ) | 0.7069 | 0.2172 | 0.2754 | 0.0627 | 0.3186 | 0.9358 | 0.9172 | 0.6840 | 0.2158 | 0.2610 | 0.0588 | 0.3183 | 0.9337 | 0.9016 |
| MOFT ( Xiao et al., 2024 ) | 0.5682 | 0.2548 | 0.2767 | 0.0734 | 0.3165 | 0.9390 | 0.9119 | 0.5331 | 0.1899 | 0.2553 | 0.0514 | 0.3116 | 0.9379 | 0.8749 |
| MotionClone ( Ling et al., 2025 ) | 0.5419 | 0.2353 | 0.2786 | 0.0690 | 0.3156 | 0.9420 | 0.9451 | 0.5125 | 0.1951 | 0.2572 | 0.0532 | 0.3145 | 0.9390 | 0.9340 |
| ConMo ( Gao et al., 2025 ) | 0.6495 | 0.2336 | 0.2738 | 0.0680 | 0.3154 | 0.9381 | 0.9084 | 0.6377 | 0.2014 | 0.2578 | 0.0553 | 0.3154 | 0.9354 | 0.8900 |
| DiTFlow ( Pondaven et al., 2025 ) | 0.6762 | 0.2134 | 0.2781 | 0.0625 | 0.3151 | 0.9414 | 0.9342 | 0.6483 | 0.1917 | 0.2587 | 0.0514 | 0.3155 | 0.9375 | 0.9146 |
| Method | MA | GTF | OG | OGS Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| DMT ( Yatim et al., 2024 ) | 3.65 | 3.70 | 3.72 | 3.68 |
| MOFT ( Xiao et al., 2024 ) | 3.81 | 3.78 | 3.81 | 3.74 |
| MotionClone ( Ling et al., 2025 ) | 3.59 | 3.56 | 3.59 | 3.61 |
| ConMo ( Gao et al., 2025 ) | 3.56 | 3.59 | 3.58 | 3.52 |
| DiTFlow ( Pondaven et al., 2025 ) | 3.40 | 3.40 | 3.46 | 3.75 |
| MotionGrounder (Ours) | 2.99 | 2.97 | 2.83 | 2.70 |
| Method | MF | IoU | LTA | OGS | GTA | CTC | DTC |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| (a) CogVideoX-5B | 0.4257 | 0.1593 | 0.2662 | 0.0446 | 0.3177 | 0.9430 | 0.9393 |
| (b) w/ FMS only | 0.6714 | 0.1652 | 0.2634 | 0.0462 | 0.3125 | 0.9419 | 0.9339 |
| (c) w/ OCAL only | 0.4860 | 0.3099 | 0.2684 | 0.0868 | 0.3223 | 0.9430 | 0.9422 |
| (d) Ours, Full | 0.6813 | 0.2371 | 0.2677 | 0.0671 | 0.3182 | 0.9417 | 0.9379 |
| Method | MF | IoU | LTA | OGS | GTA | CTC | DTC |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| (a) no OCAL | 0.6714 | 0.1652 | 0.2634 | 0.0462 | 0.3125 | 0.9419 | 0.9339 |
| (b) text-to-vid only | 0.6749 | 0.2328 | 0.2668 | 0.0659 | 0.3172 | 0.9416 | 0.9363 |
| (c) vid-to-text only | 0.6675 | 0.2157 | 0.2662 | 0.0609 | 0.3151 | 0.9420 | 0.9368 |
| (d) text-to-vid + | 0.6791 | 0.2375 | 0.2654 | 0.0667 | 0.3172 | 0.9420 | 0.9361 |
| vid-to-text | |||||||
| (e) w/ repetition | 0.6800 | 0.2345 | 0.2644 | 0.0656 | 0.3176 | 0.9416 | 0.9349 |
Appendix figures & tables20 assets
Supplementary material from the paper’s appendix.
Appendix
| Metric | Global Alignment | Object Localization | Object–Caption Association |
|---|---|---|---|
| Global CLIP Score | ✓ | ✗ | ✗ |
| Intersection-over-Union | ✗ | ✓ | ✗ |
| Local CLIP Score | ✗ | ✗ | ✓ |
| OGS (Ours) | ✗ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Method | Caption | Subject | ||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| MF | IoU | LTA | OGS | GTA | CTC | DTC | MF | IoU | LTA | OGS | GTA | CTC | DTC | |
| (a) CogVideoX-5B | 0.4288 | 0.1749 | 0.2770 | 0.0504 | 0.3158 | 0.9434 | 0.9463 | 0.4306 | 0.1527 | 0.2608 | 0.0415 | 0.3204 | 0.9431 | 0.9400 |
| (b) w/ FMS only | 0.6846 | 0.1863 | 0.2763 | 0.0541 | 0.3140 | 0.9426 | 0.9408 | 0.6730 | 0.1652 | 0.2532 | 0.0450 | 0.3082 | 0.9414 | 0.9312 |
| (c) w/ OCAL only | 0.5011 | 0.3278 | 0.2789 | 0.0945 | 0.3202 | 0.9430 | 0.9444 | 0.4964 | 0.2993 | 0.2633 | 0.0827 | 0.3262 | 0.9419 | 0.9374 |
| (d) Ours, Full | 0.6875 | 0.2638 | 0.2776 | 0.0763 | 0.3224 | 0.9426 | 0.9439 | 0.6818 | 0.2403 | 0.2617 | 0.0667 | 0.3150 | 0.9410 | 0.9335 |
| Method | Scene | All | ||||||||||||
| Method | Caption | Subject | ||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| MF | IoU | LTA | OGS | GTA | CTC | DTC | MF | IoU | LTA | OGS | GTA | CTC | DTC | |
| (a) no FMS | 0.5011 | 0.3278 | 0.2789 | 0.0945 | 0.3202 | 0.9430 | 0.9444 | 0.4964 | 0.2993 | 0.2633 | 0.0827 | 0.3262 | 0.9419 | 0.9374 |
| (b) w/o traj dup | 0.6814 | 0.2574 | 0.2781 | 0.0740 | 0.3194 | 0.9417 | 0.9484 | 0.6737 | 0.2244 | 0.2604 | 0.0621 | 0.3187 | 0.9404 | 0.9369 |
| (c) w/ traj dup (Ours, Full) | 0.6875 | 0.2638 | 0.2776 | 0.0763 | 0.3224 | 0.9426 | 0.9439 | 0.6818 | 0.2403 | 0.2617 | 0.0667 | 0.3150 | 0.9410 | 0.9335 |
| Method | Scene | All | ||||||||||||
| MF | IoU | LTA | OGS | GTA | CTC | DTC | MF | IoU | LTA | OGS | GTA | CTC | DTC | |
| Method | Caption | Subject | ||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| MF | IoU | LTA | OGS | GTA | CTC | DTC | MF | IoU | LTA | OGS | GTA | CTC | DTC | |
| (a) no OCAL | 0.6846 | 0.1863 | 0.2763 | 0.0541 | 0.3140 | 0.9426 | 0.9408 | 0.6730 | 0.1652 | 0.2532 | 0.0450 | 0.3082 | 0.9414 | 0.9312 |
| (b) text-to-vid only | 0.6815 | 0.2601 | 0.2796 | 0.0752 | 0.3206 | 0.9426 | 0.9432 | 0.6718 | 0.2332 | 0.2586 | 0.0643 | 0.3134 | 0.9401 | 0.9315 |
| (c) vid-to-text only | 0.6744 | 0.2441 | 0.2752 | 0.0704 | 0.3160 | 0.9430 | 0.9437 | 0.6680 | 0.2239 | 0.2613 | 0.0623 | 0.3122 | 0.9409 | 0.9322 |
| (d) text-to-vid + vid-to-text | 0.6800 | 0.2672 | 0.2779 | 0.0766 | 0.3209 | 0.9431 | 0.9424 | 0.6812 | 0.2367 | 0.2586 | 0.0652 | 0.3144 | 0.9408 | 0.9311 |
| (e) w/ repetition | 0.6832 | 0.2628 | 0.2770 | 0.0752 | 0.3219 | 0.9425 | 0.9399 | 0.6784 | 0.2367 | 0.2584 | 0.0651 | 0.3151 | 0.9401 | 0.9284 |
| Method | Caption | Subject | ||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| MF | IoU | LTA | OGS | GTA | CTC | DTC | MF | IoU | LTA | OGS | GTA | CTC | DTC | |
| (a) | 0.6681 | 0.2533 | 0.2772 | 0.0732 | 0.3157 | 0.9419 | 0.9433 | 0.6498 | 0.2232 | 0.2582 | 0.0620 | 0.3123 | 0.9410 | 0.9358 |
| (b) (Ours) | 0.6875 | 0.2638 | 0.2776 | 0.0763 | 0.3224 | 0.9426 | 0.9439 | 0.6818 | 0.2403 | 0.2617 | 0.0667 | 0.3150 | 0.9410 | 0.9335 |
| (c) | 0.6708 | 0.2535 | 0.2747 | 0.0728 | 0.3145 | 0.9427 | 0.9466 | 0.6538 | 0.2239 | 0.2592 | 0.0616 | 0.3126 | 0.9406 | 0.9345 |
| Method | Scene | All | ||||||||||||
| MF | IoU | LTA | OGS | GTA | CTC | DTC | MF | IoU | LTA | OGS | GTA | CTC | DTC | |
| Method | Caption | Subject | ||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| MF | IoU | LTA | OGS | GTA | CTC | DTC | MF | IoU | LTA | OGS | GTA | CTC | DTC | |
| (a) | 0.6757 | 0.2576 | 0.2775 | 0.0744 | 0.3194 | 0.9422 | 0.9425 | 0.6712 | 0.2210 | 0.2581 | 0.0608 | 0.3124 | 0.9409 | 0.9321 |
| (b) (Ours) | 0.6875 | 0.2638 | 0.2776 | 0.0763 | 0.3224 | 0.9426 | 0.9439 | 0.6818 | 0.2403 | 0.2617 | 0.0667 | 0.3150 | 0.9410 | 0.9335 |
| (c) | 0.6748 | 0.2655 | 0.2754 | 0.0759 | 0.3211 | 0.9427 | 0.9423 | 0.6769 | 0.2437 | 0.2613 | 0.0673 | 0.3169 | 0.9402 | 0.9331 |
| Method | Scene | All | ||||||||||||
| MF | IoU | LTA | OGS | GTA | CTC | DTC | MF | IoU | LTA | OGS | GTA | CTC | DTC | |
| Method | Caption | Subject | ||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| MF | IoU | LTA | OGS | GTA | CTC | DTC | MF | IoU | LTA | OGS | GTA | CTC | DTC | |
| (a) | 0.5751 | 0.2823 | 0.2827 | 0.0820 | 0.3231 | 0.9425 | 0.9422 | 0.5473 | 0.2712 | 0.2604 | 0.0744 | 0.3222 | 0.9405 | 0.9397 |
| (b) | 0.6690 | 0.2757 | 0.2798 | 0.0794 | 0.3212 | 0.9419 | 0.9418 | 0.6604 | 0.2362 | 0.2603 | 0.0651 | 0.3160 | 0.9400 | 0.9310 |
| (c) (Ours) | 0.6875 | 0.2638 | 0.2776 | 0.0763 | 0.3224 | 0.9426 | 0.9439 | 0.6818 | 0.2403 | 0.2617 | 0.0667 | 0.3150 | 0.9410 | 0.9335 |
| (d) | 0.6805 | 0.2652 | 0.2781 | 0.0763 | 0.3196 | 0.9415 | 0.9435 | 0.6779 | 0.2348 | 0.2592 | 0.0643 | 0.3149 | 0.9404 | 0.9316 |
| Method | Scene | All | ||||||||||||
| Method | Caption | Subject | ||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| MF | IoU | LTA | OGS | GTA | CTC | DTC | MF | IoU | LTA | OGS | GTA | CTC | DTC | |
| (a) | 0.6730 | 0.2657 | 0.2790 | 0.0766 | 0.3213 | 0.9424 | 0.9396 | 0.6771 | 0.2440 | 0.2607 | 0.0674 | 0.3179 | 0.9404 | 0.9283 |
| (b) | 0.6770 | 0.2655 | 0.2790 | 0.0764 | 0.3201 | 0.9422 | 0.9407 | 0.6781 | 0.2400 | 0.2607 | 0.0665 | 0.3167 | 0.9407 | 0.9290 |
| (c) (Ours) | 0.6875 | 0.2638 | 0.2776 | 0.0763 | 0.3224 | 0.9426 | 0.9439 | 0.6818 | 0.2403 | 0.2617 | 0.0667 | 0.3150 | 0.9410 | 0.9335 |
| (d) | 0.6757 | 0.2695 | 0.2779 | 0.0772 | 0.3222 | 0.9417 | 0.9423 | 0.6762 | 0.2444 | 0.2578 | 0.0673 | 0.3146 | 0.9406 | 0.9285 |
| Method | Scene | All | ||||||||||||
| Method | Caption | Subject | ||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| MF | IoU | LTA | OGS | GTA | CTC | DTC | MF | IoU | LTA | OGS | GTA | CTC | DTC | |
| (a) | 0.6785 | 0.2305 | 0.2768 | 0.0669 | 0.3164 | 0.9422 | 0.9419 | 0.6662 | 0.2166 | 0.2604 | 0.0601 | 0.3144 | 0.9408 | 0.9308 |
| (b) (Ours) | 0.6875 | 0.2638 | 0.2776 | 0.0763 | 0.3224 | 0.9426 | 0.9439 | 0.6818 | 0.2403 | 0.2617 | 0.0667 | 0.3150 | 0.9410 | 0.9335 |
| (c) | 0.6739 | 0.2560 | 0.2795 | 0.0744 | 0.3196 | 0.9422 | 0.9439 | 0.6558 | 0.2369 | 0.2626 | 0.0658 | 0.3130 | 0.9414 | 0.9356 |
| (d) | 0.6746 | 0.2532 | 0.2751 | 0.0732 | 0.3140 | 0.9428 | 0.9453 | 0.6502 | 0.2231 | 0.2598 | 0.0617 | 0.3140 | 0.9411 | 0.9358 |
| Method | Scene | All | ||||||||||||
| Method | Caption | Subject | ||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| MF | IoU | LTA | OGS | GTA | CTC | DTC | MF | IoU | LTA | OGS | GTA | CTC | DTC | |
| Wan2.1 | 0.4661 | 0.1867 | 0.2790 | 0.0543 | 0.3230 | 0.9443 | 0.9615 | 0.4632 | 0.1642 | 0.2670 | 0.0453 | 0.3267 | 0.9459 | 0.9662 |
| Wan2.1 + MotionGrounder | 0.6050 | 0.2045 | 0.2786 | 0.0592 | 0.3191 | 0.9406 | 0.9565 | 0.5829 | 0.1972 | 0.2704 | 0.0555 | 0.3305 | 0.9398 | 0.9467 |
| Method | Scene | All | ||||||||||||
| MF | IoU | LTA | OGS | GTA | CTC | DTC | MF | IoU | LTA | OGS | GTA | CTC | DTC | |
| Wan2.1 | 0.4574 | 0.1476 | 0.2640 | 0.0404 | 0.3257 | 0.9453 | 0.9658 | 0.4623 | 0.1662 | 0.2700 | 0.0466 | 0.3251 | 0.9452 | 0.9645 |
| Method | 1 object | 2 objects | 3 objects | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Runtime (s) | Memory (GB) | Runtime (s) | Memory (GB) | Runtime (s) | Memory (GB) | |
| DMT ( Yatim et al., 2024 ) | 475.39 | 22.64 | 475.99 | 22.64 | 475.50 | 22.64 |
| MOFT ( Xiao et al., 2024 ) | 477.19 | 22.64 | 477.31 | 22.64 | 476.21 | 22.64 |
| MotionClone ( Ling et al., 2025 ) | 481.17 | 32.42 | 481.59 | 32.42 | 480.45 | 32.42 |
| ConMo ( Gao et al., 2025 ) | 480.01 | 22.64 | 483.74 | 22.64 | 480.54 | 22.64 |
| DiTFlow ( Pondaven et al., 2025 ) | 486.35 | 31.92 | 486.09 | 31.92 | 485.92 | 31.92 |
Controllable Video Generation
Controllable video generation steers how videos look, move, and change over time using user-provided instructions and structured controls.
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