Typical layout-to-image synthesis (LIS) models generate images for a closed set of semantic classes, e.g., 182 common objects in COCO-Stuff. In this work, we explore the freestyle capability of the model, i.e., how far can it generate unseen semantics (e.g., classes, attributes, and styles) onto a given layout, and call the task Freestyle LIS (FLIS). Thanks to the development of large-scale pre-trained language-image models, a number of discriminative models (e.g., image classification and object detection) trained on limited base classes are empowered with the ability of unseen class prediction. Inspired by this, we opt to leverage large-scale pre-trained text-to-image diffusion models to achieve the generation of unseen semantics. The key challenge of FLIS is how to enable the diffusion model to synthesize images from a specific layout which very likely violates its pre-learned knowledge, e.g., the model never sees "a unicorn sitting on a bench" during its pre-training. To this end, we introduce a new module called Rectified Cross-Attention (RCA) that can be conveniently plugged in the diffusion model to integrate semantic masks. This "plug-in" is applied in each cross-attention layer of the model to rectify the attention maps between image and text tokens. The key idea of RCA is to enforce each text token to act on the pixels in a specified region, allowing us to freely put a wide variety of semantics from pre-trained knowledge (which is general) onto the given layout (which is specific). Extensive experiments show that the proposed diffusion network produces realistic and freestyle layout-to-image generation results with diverse text inputs, which has a high potential to spawn a bunch of interesting applications. Code is available at https://github.com/essunny310/FreestyleNet.
FreeStyle: Free Lunch for Text-guided Style Transfer using Diffusion Models
School of Cyberspace Security at Sun Yat-sen University（中山大学网络空间安全学院）；Institute of Software,Chinese Academy of Sciences（中国科学院软件研究所）；Information Technology Service Center of People’s Court（人民法院信息技术服务中心）；School of Computer Science and Technology, Harbin Institute of Technology（哈尔滨工业大学计算机科学与技术学院）
Current Generative Adversarial Networks (GANs) produce photorealistic renderings of portrait images. Embedding real images into the latent space of such models enables high-level image editing. While recent methods provide considerable semantic control over the (re-)generated images, they can only generate a limited set of viewpoints and cannot explicitly control the camera. Such 3D camera control is required for 3D virtual and mixed reality applications. In our solution, we use a few images of a face to perform 3D reconstruction, and we introduce the notion of the GAN camera manifold, the key…
Beihang University（北京航空航天大学）；Harbin Institute of Technology at Shenzhen（哈尔滨工业大学（深圳））
The crux of text-to-image synthesis stems from the difficulty of preserving the cross-modality semantic consistency between the input text and the synthesized image. Typical methods, which seek to model the text-to-image mapping directly, could only capture keywords in the text that indicates common objects or actions but fail to learn their spatial distribution patterns. An effective way to circumvent this limitation is to generate an image layout as guidance, which is attempted by a few methods. Nevertheless, these methods fail to generate practically effective layouts due to the diversity o…
Interactive image synthesis from user-guided input is a challenging task when users wish to control the scene structure of a generated image with ease.Although remarkable progress has been made on layout-based image synthesis approaches, in order to get realistic fake image in interactive scene, existing methods require high-precision inputs, which probably need adjustment several times and are unfriendly to novice users. When placement of bounding boxes is subject to perturbation, layout-based models suffer from "missing regions" in the constructed semantic layouts and hence undesirable artif…
We propose a novel hierarchical approach for text-to-image synthesis by inferring semantic layout. Instead of learning a direct mapping from text to image, our algorithm decomposes the generation process into multiple steps, in which it first constructs a semantic layout from the text by the layout generator and converts the layout to an image by the image generator. The proposed layout generator progressively constructs a semantic layout in a coarse-to-fine manner by generating object bounding boxes and refining each box by estimating object shapes inside the box. The image generator synthesi…
With the remarkable recent progress on learning deep generative models, it becomes increasingly interesting to develop models for controllable image synthesis from reconfigurable inputs. This paper focuses on a recent emerged task, layout-to-image, to learn generative models that are capable of synthesizing photo-realistic images from spatial layout (i.e., object bounding boxes configured in an image lattice) and style (i.e., structural and appearance variations encoded by latent vectors). This paper first proposes an intuitive paradigm for the task, layout-to-mask-to-image, to learn to unfold…
Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona（巴塞罗那自治大学）；Indian Statistical Institute（印度统计研究所）
Despite significant progress on current state-of-the-art image generation models, synthesis of document images containing multiple and complex object layouts is a challenging task. This paper presents a novel approach, called DocSynth, to automatically synthesize document images based on a given layout. In this work, given a spatial layout (bounding boxes with object categories) as a reference by the user, our proposed DocSynth model learns to generate a set of realistic document images consistent with the defined layout. Also, this framework has been adapted to this work as a superior baselin…
Technical University of Kaiserslautern（凯泽斯劳滕工业大学）；German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence (DFKI)（德国人工智能研究中心（DFKI））
Conditional image synthesis from layout has recently attracted much interest. Previous approaches condition the generator on object locations as well as class labels but lack fine-grained control over the diverse appearance aspects of individual objects. Gaining control over the image generation process is fundamental to build practical applications with a user-friendly interface. In this paper, we propose a method for attribute controlled image synthesis from layout which allows to specify the appearance of individual objects without affecting the rest of the image. We extend a state-of-the-a…
University of Central Florida（中佛罗里达大学）；Microsoft Dynamics 365 AI Research（微软 Dynamics 365 AI 研究院）
We propose a new task towards more practical application for image generation - high-quality image synthesis from salient object layout. This new setting allows users to provide the layout of salient objects only (i.e., foreground bounding boxes and categories), and lets the model complete the drawing with an invented background and a matching foreground. Two main challenges spring from this new task: (i) how to generate fine-grained details and realistic textures without segmentation map input; and (ii) how to create a background and weave it seamlessly into standalone objects. To tackle this…
Recent conditional image synthesis approaches provide high-quality synthesized images. However, it is still challenging to accurately adjust image contents such as the positions and orientations of objects, and synthesized images often have geometrically invalid contents. To provide users with rich controllability on synthesized images in the aspect of 3D geometry, we propose a novel approach to realistic-looking image synthesis based on a configurable 3D scene layout. Our approach takes a 3D scene with semantic class labels as input and trains a 3D scene painting network that synthesizes colo…
CalliMaster: Mastering Page-level Chinese Calligraphy via Layout-guided Spatial Planning
The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (Guangzhou)（香港科技大学（广州））；Faculty of Engineering and IT, University of Technology Sydney（悉尼大学工程与信息学院）；Xiamen University（厦门大学）；The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology（香港科技大学）
We propose a new framework for conditional image synthesis from semantic layouts of any precision levels, ranging from pure text to a 2D semantic canvas with precise shapes. More specifically, the input layout consists of one or more semantic regions with free-form text descriptions and adjustable precision levels, which can be set based on the desired controllability. The framework naturally reduces to text-to-image (T2I) at the lowest level with no shape information, and it becomes segmentation-to-image (S2I) at the highest level. By supporting the levels in-between, our framework is flexibl…
Despite remarkable recent progress on both unconditional and conditional image synthesis, it remains a long-standing problem to learn generative models that are capable of synthesizing realistic and sharp images from reconfigurable spatial layout (i.e., bounding boxes + class labels in an image lattice) and style (i.e., structural and appearance variations encoded by latent vectors), especially at high resolution. By reconfigurable, it means that a model can preserve the intrinsic one-to-many mapping from a given layout to multiple plausible images with different styles, and is adaptive with r…
Despite the recent progress of generative adversarial networks (GANs) at synthesizing photo-realistic images, producing complex urban scenes remains a challenging problem. Previous works break down scene generation into two consecutive phases: unconditional semantic layout synthesis and image synthesis conditioned on layouts. In this work, we propose to condition layout generation as well for higher semantic control: given a vector of class proportions, we generate layouts with matching composition. To this end, we introduce a conditional framework with novel architecture designs and learning …
University at Albany, SUNY（纽约州立大学奥尔巴尼分校）；Microsoft Research AI（微软研究院人工智能部门）；Microsoft（微软公司）；JD AI Research（京东人工智能研究院）
In this paper, we propose Object-driven Attentive Generative Adversarial Newtorks (Obj-GANs) that allow object-centered text-to-image synthesis for complex scenes. Following the two-step (layout-image) generation process, a novel object-driven attentive image generator is proposed to synthesize salient objects by paying attention to the most relevant words in the text description and the pre-generated semantic layout. In addition, a new Fast R-CNN based object-wise discriminator is proposed to provide rich object-wise discrimination signals on whether the synthesized object matches the text de…
Tomorrow Advancing Life（好未来）；Harbin Institute of Technology（哈尔滨工业大学）；Alibaba Group（阿里巴巴集团）；Tianjin University（天津大学）；Peng Cheng Laboratory（鹏城实验室）
Recent years have witnessed substantial progress in semantic image synthesis, it is still challenging in synthesizing photo-realistic images with rich details. Most previous methods focus on exploiting the given semantic map, which just captures an object-level layout for an image. Obviously, a fine-grained part-level semantic layout will benefit object details generation, and it can be roughly inferred from an object's shape. In order to exploit the part-level layouts, we propose a Shape-aware Position Descriptor (SPD) to describe each pixel's positional feature, where object shape is explici…
Peking University（北京大学）；Institute of Computer Science and Technology（计算机科学技术研究所）
In this work, we present a new framework for the stylization of text-based binary images. First, our method stylizes the stroke-based geometric shape like text, symbols and icons in the target binary image based on an input style image. Second, the composition of the stylized geometric shape and a background image is explored. To accomplish the task, we propose legibility-preserving structure and texture transfer algorithms, which progressively narrow the visual differences between the binary image and the style image. The stylization is then followed by a context-aware layout design algorithm…
Yonsei University（延世大学）；Georgia Institute of Technology（佐治亚理工学院）；Google Research（谷歌研究院）；University of California, Merced（加利福尼亚大学默塞德分校）
Graphic design is essential for visual communication with layouts being fundamental to composing attractive designs. Layout generation differs from pixel-level image synthesis and is unique in terms of the requirement of mutual relations among the desired components. We propose a method for design layout generation that can satisfy user-specified constraints. The proposed neural design network (NDN) consists of three modules. The first module predicts a graph with complete relations from a graph with user-specified relations. The second module generates a layout from the predicted graph. Final…
College of Information Science and Engineering（信息科学与工程学院）；Ocean University of China（中国海洋大学）
Semantic layouts based Image synthesizing, which has benefited from the success of Generative Adversarial Network (GAN), has drawn much attention in these days. How to enhance the synthesis image equality while keeping the stochasticity of the GAN is still a challenge. We propose a novel denoising framework to handle this problem. The overlapped objects generation is another challenging task when synthesizing images from a semantic layout to a realistic RGB photo. To overcome this deficiency, we include a one-hot semantic label map to force the generator paying more attention on the overlapped…
Most existing methods for conditional image synthesis are only able to generate a single plausible image for any given input, or at best a fixed number of plausible images. In this paper, we focus on the problem of generating images from semantic segmentation maps and present a simple new method that can generate an arbitrary number of images with diverse appearance for the same semantic layout. Unlike most existing approaches which adopt the GAN framework, our method is based on the recently introduced Implicit Maximum Likelihood Estimation (IMLE) framework. Compared to the leading approach, …
The Chinese University of Hong Kong（香港中文大学）；University of Science and Technology of China（中国科学技术大学）；SenseTime Research（商汤科技研究院）
Semantic image synthesis aims at generating photorealistic images from semantic layouts. Previous approaches with conditional generative adversarial networks (GAN) show state-of-the-art performance on this task, which either feed the semantic label maps as inputs to the generator, or use them to modulate the activations in normalization layers via affine transformations. We argue that convolutional kernels in the generator should be aware of the distinct semantic labels at different locations when generating images. In order to better exploit the semantic layout for the image generator, we pro…
Enhancing Object Coherence in Layout-to-Image Synthesis
School of Computer Science, Fudan University（复旦大学计算机科学学院）；College of Computer Science and Technology, Zhejiang University of Technology（浙江工业大学计算机科学与技术学院）
Hacettepe University（哈西特佩大学）；Max-Planck Institute for Informatics（马克斯·普朗克信息学研究所）
Automatic image synthesis research has been rapidly growing with deep networks getting more and more expressive. In the last couple of years, we have observed images of digits, indoor scenes, birds, chairs, etc. being automatically generated. The expressive power of image generators have also been enhanced by introducing several forms of conditioning variables such as object names, sentences, bounding box and key-point locations. In this work, we propose a novel deep conditional generative adversarial network architecture that takes its strength from the semantic layout and scene attributes in…
University of Warwick（华威大学）；The Alan Turing Institute（阿兰·图灵研究所）；University Hospitals Coventry & Warwickshire（考文垂和沃里克郡大学医院）；Histofy Ltd（Histofy有限公司）
Automated synthesis of histology images has several potential applications in computational pathology. However, no existing method can generate realistic tissue images with a bespoke cellular layout or user-defined histology parameters. In this work, we propose a novel framework called SynCLay (Synthesis from Cellular Layouts) that can construct realistic and high-quality histology images from user-defined cellular layouts along with annotated cellular boundaries. Tissue image generation based on bespoke cellular layouts through the proposed framework allows users to generate different histolo…
STAY Diffusion: Styled Layout Diffusion Model for Diverse Layout-to-Image Generation
Bosch Center for Artificial Intelligence（博世人工智能中心）；Institute of Industrial Manufacturing and Management IFF, University of Stuttgart（斯图加特大学工业制造与管理研究所）；Fraunhofer Institute for Manufacturing Engineering and Automation IPA（弗劳恩霍夫制造工程与自动化研究所）
针对布局到图像生成，本文提出 STAY Diffusion，通过 EA Norm、自监督语义图与 SM Attention 增强全局条件和对象关系建模，提升图像质量、多样性、准确性与可控性。
LayoutDiffusion: Controllable Diffusion Model for Layout-to-image Generation
College of Computer Science & Technology, Zhejiang University（浙江大学计算机科学与技术学院）；Polytechnic Institute, Zhejiang University（浙江大学理工学院）；ARC Lab, Tencent PCG（腾讯平台与内容事业群ARC实验室）；Shanghai Institute for Advanced Study of Zhejiang University（浙江大学上海高等研究院）；Shanghai AI Lab（上海人工智能实验室）；Zhejiang – Singapore Innovation and AI Joint Research Lab（浙新创新与人工智能联合实验室）
University of California, Berkeley（加州大学伯克利分校）；Google Research（谷歌研究院）
Coupling the high-fidelity generation capabilities of label-conditional image synthesis methods with the flexibility of unconditional generative models, we propose a semantic bottleneck GAN model for unconditional synthesis of complex scenes. We assume pixel-wise segmentation labels are available during training and use them to learn the scene structure. During inference, our model first synthesizes a realistic segmentation layout from scratch, then synthesizes a realistic scene conditioned on that layout. For the former, we use an unconditional progressive segmentation generation network that…
