Destination-Conditioned Adaptation with Semantic-Geometric Alignment for Generative Inbetweening

Abstract

Generative inbetweening aims to synthesize temporally coherent intermediate frames between a start frame and a target frame. Although pretrained image-to-video diffusion models provide strong priors for large-motion inbetweening, they are not explicitly designed to reach a specified target frame. They may therefore generate realistic individual frames while drifting from the target or producing unstable motion under large displacements and non-rigid dynamics. We propose DSG-GI, a framework that adapts pretrained latent video diffusion models through \textbf{D}estination-Conditioned Adaptation and \textbf{S}emantic-\textbf{G}eometric Alignment. Destination-Conditioned Adaptation treats the target frame as the destination of the sequence and provides temporally progressive guidance along the generated trajectory. Semantic-Geometric Alignment aligns the token-wise spatio-temporal relational geometry of backbone features with that of a frozen video foundation encoder and applies a flow-matching-aware latent flow constraint to samples near the data endpoint of the probability path. Together, these components strengthen destination guidance and preserve coherent semantic-geometric motion structure. Extensive experiments on standard and large-motion inbetweening benchmarks demonstrate improvements in temporal stability, target-frame faithfulness, and perceptual quality. Our code will be made publicly available.