README.md

---
license: apache-2.0
library_name: diffusers
pipeline_tag: text-to-image
tags:
- flow-matching
- distillation
- flux
- stable-diffusion
---

# 🚀 SenseFlow: Scaling Distribution Matching for Flow-based Text-to-Image Distillation

[![arXiv](https://img.shields.io/badge/Arxiv-2506.00523-b31b1b)](https://arxiv.org/abs/2506.00523) 
[![GitHub Repo stars](https://img.shields.io/github/stars/XingtongGe/SenseFlow.svg?style=social&label=Star&maxAge=60)](https://github.com/XingtongGe/SenseFlow)
[![Model on HF](https://huggingface.co/datasets/huggingface/badges/resolve/main/model-on-hf-md-dark.svg)](https://huggingface.co/domiso/SenseFlow)

[Xingtong Ge](https://xingtongge.github.io/)<sup>1,2</sup>, Xin Zhang<sup>2</sup>, [Tongda Xu](https://tongdaxu.github.io/)<sup>3</sup>, [Yi Zhang](https://zhangyi-3.github.io/)<sup>4</sup>, [Xinjie Zhang](https://xinjie-q.github.io/)<sup>1</sup>, [Yan Wang](https://yanwang202199.github.io/)<sup>3</sup>, [Jun Zhang](https://eejzhang.people.ust.hk/)<sup>1</sup>

<sup>1</sup>HKUST, <sup>2</sup>SenseTime Research, <sup>3</sup>Tsinghua University, <sup>4</sup>CUHK MMLab  

## Abstract

The Distribution Matching Distillation (DMD) has been successfully applied to text-to-image diffusion models such as Stable Diffusion (SD) 1.5. However, vanilla DMD suffers from convergence difficulties on large-scale flow-based text-to-image models, such as SD 3.5 and FLUX. In this paper, we first analyze the issues when applying vanilla DMD on large-scale models. Then, to overcome the scalability challenge, we propose implicit distribution alignment (IDA) to constrain the divergence between the generator and the fake distribution. Furthermore, we propose intra-segment guidance (ISG) to relocate the timestep denoising importance from the teacher model. With IDA alone, DMD converges for SD 3.5; employing both IDA and ISG, DMD converges for SD 3.5 and FLUX.1 dev. Together with a scaled VFM-based discriminator, our final model, dubbed **SenseFlow**, achieves superior performance in distillation for both diffusion based text-to-image models such as SDXL, and flow-matching models such as SD 3.5 Large and FLUX.1 dev.

## SenseFlow-FLUX.1 dev (supports 4–8-step generation)
* `SenseFlow-FLUX/diffusion_pytorch_model.safetensors`: the DiT checkpoint.
* `SenseFlow-FLUX/config.json`: the config of DiT using in our model.


### Usage

1. prepare the base checkpoint of FLUX.1 dev to `Path/to/FLUX`
2. Use `SenseFlow-FLUX` to replace the transformer folder `Path/to/FLUX/transformer`, obtaining the `Path/to/SenseFlow-FLUX`.

#### Using the Euler sampler
```python
import torch
from diffusers import FluxPipeline
from diffusers import FlowMatchEulerDiscreteScheduler

pipe = FluxPipeline.from_pretrained("Path/to/SenseFlow-FLUX", torch_dtype=torch.bfloat16).to("cuda")

prompt="A cat sleeping on a windowsill with white curtains fluttering in the breeze"

images = pipe(
    prompt,
    height=1024,
    width=1024,
    num_inference_steps=4,
    max_sequence_length=512,
).images[0]

images.save("output.png")
```
#### Using the x0 sampler (similar to the LCMScheduler in diffusers)
```python
import torch
from diffusers import FluxPipeline
from diffusers import FlowMatchEulerDiscreteScheduler
from typing import Union, Tuple, Optional

class FlowMatchEulerX0Scheduler(FlowMatchEulerDiscreteScheduler):
    def step(
        self,
        model_output: torch.FloatTensor,
        timestep: Union[float, torch.FloatTensor],
        sample: torch.FloatTensor,
        generator: Optional[torch.Generator] = None,
        return_dict: bool = True,
    ) -> Union[FlowMatchEulerDiscreteSchedulerOutput, Tuple]:

        if self.step_index is None:
            self._init_step_index(timestep)

        sample = sample.to(torch.float32)  # Ensure precision

        sigma = self.sigmas[self.step_index]
        sigma_next = self.sigmas[self.step_index + 1]

        # 1. Compute x0 from model output (assuming model predicts noise)
        x0 = sample - sigma * model_output

        # 2. Add noise to x0 to get the sample for the next step
        noise = torch.randn_like(sample)
        prev_sample = (1 - sigma_next) * x0 + sigma_next * noise

        prev_sample = prev_sample.to(model_output.dtype)  # Convert back to original dtype
        self._step_index += 1  # Move to next step

        if not return_dict:
            return (prev_sample,)
        
        return FlowMatchEulerDiscreteSchedulerOutput(prev_sample=prev_sample)

pipe = FluxPipeline.from_pretrained("Path/to/SenseFlow-FLUX", torch_dtype=torch.bfloat16).to("cuda")
pipe.scheduler = FlowMatchEulerX0Scheduler.from_config(pipe.scheduler.config)

prompt="A cat sleeping on a windowsill with white curtains fluttering in the breeze"

images = pipe(
    prompt,
    height=1024,
    width=1024,
    num_inference_steps=4,
    max_sequence_length=512,
).images[0]

images.save("output.png")
```

## DanceGRPO-SenseFlow (supports 4–8-step generation)

comming soon!

## Citation

```bibtex
@article{ge2025senseflow,
  title={SenseFlow: Scaling Distribution Matching for Flow-based Text-to-Image Distillation},
  author={Ge, Xingtong and Zhang, Xin and Xu, Tongda and Zhang, Yi and Xinjie, Zhang and Yan, Wang and Jun, Zhang},
  journal={arXiv preprint arXiv:2506.00523},
  year={2025}
}
```