CoDance: An Unbind-Rebind Paradigm for Robust Multi-Subject Animation

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Tan, Shuai, Gong, Biao, Ma, Ke, Feng, Yutong, Zhang, Qiyuan, Wang, Yan, Shen, Yujun, Zhao, Hengshuang
Format: Preprint
Published: 2026
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author Tan, Shuai
Gong, Biao
Ma, Ke
Feng, Yutong
Zhang, Qiyuan
Wang, Yan
Shen, Yujun
Zhao, Hengshuang
author_facet Tan, Shuai
Gong, Biao
Ma, Ke
Feng, Yutong
Zhang, Qiyuan
Wang, Yan
Shen, Yujun
Zhao, Hengshuang
contents Character image animation is gaining significant importance across various domains, driven by the demand for robust and flexible multi-subject rendering. While existing methods excel in single-person animation, they struggle to handle arbitrary subject counts, diverse character types, and spatial misalignment between the reference image and the driving poses. We attribute these limitations to an overly rigid spatial binding that forces strict pixel-wise alignment between the pose and reference, and an inability to consistently rebind motion to intended subjects. To address these challenges, we propose CoDance, a novel Unbind-Rebind framework that enables the animation of arbitrary subject counts, types, and spatial configurations conditioned on a single, potentially misaligned pose sequence. Specifically, the Unbind module employs a novel pose shift encoder to break the rigid spatial binding between the pose and the reference by introducing stochastic perturbations to both poses and their latent features, thereby compelling the model to learn a location-agnostic motion representation. To ensure precise control and subject association, we then devise a Rebind module, leveraging semantic guidance from text prompts and spatial guidance from subject masks to direct the learned motion to intended characters. Furthermore, to facilitate comprehensive evaluation, we introduce a new multi-subject CoDanceBench. Extensive experiments on CoDanceBench and existing datasets show that CoDance achieves SOTA performance, exhibiting remarkable generalization across diverse subjects and spatial layouts. The code and weights will be open-sourced.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2601_11096
institution arXiv
publishDate 2026
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle CoDance: An Unbind-Rebind Paradigm for Robust Multi-Subject Animation
Tan, Shuai
Gong, Biao
Ma, Ke
Feng, Yutong
Zhang, Qiyuan
Wang, Yan
Shen, Yujun
Zhao, Hengshuang
Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition
Character image animation is gaining significant importance across various domains, driven by the demand for robust and flexible multi-subject rendering. While existing methods excel in single-person animation, they struggle to handle arbitrary subject counts, diverse character types, and spatial misalignment between the reference image and the driving poses. We attribute these limitations to an overly rigid spatial binding that forces strict pixel-wise alignment between the pose and reference, and an inability to consistently rebind motion to intended subjects. To address these challenges, we propose CoDance, a novel Unbind-Rebind framework that enables the animation of arbitrary subject counts, types, and spatial configurations conditioned on a single, potentially misaligned pose sequence. Specifically, the Unbind module employs a novel pose shift encoder to break the rigid spatial binding between the pose and the reference by introducing stochastic perturbations to both poses and their latent features, thereby compelling the model to learn a location-agnostic motion representation. To ensure precise control and subject association, we then devise a Rebind module, leveraging semantic guidance from text prompts and spatial guidance from subject masks to direct the learned motion to intended characters. Furthermore, to facilitate comprehensive evaluation, we introduce a new multi-subject CoDanceBench. Extensive experiments on CoDanceBench and existing datasets show that CoDance achieves SOTA performance, exhibiting remarkable generalization across diverse subjects and spatial layouts. The code and weights will be open-sourced.
title CoDance: An Unbind-Rebind Paradigm for Robust Multi-Subject Animation
topic Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2601.11096