English

Modular MeanFlow: Towards Stable and Scalable One-Step Generative Modeling

Machine Learning 2025-08-26 v1

Abstract

One-step generative modeling seeks to generate high-quality data samples in a single function evaluation, significantly improving efficiency over traditional diffusion or flow-based models. In this work, we introduce Modular MeanFlow (MMF), a flexible and theoretically grounded approach for learning time-averaged velocity fields. Our method derives a family of loss functions based on a differential identity linking instantaneous and average velocities, and incorporates a gradient modulation mechanism that enables stable training without sacrificing expressiveness. We further propose a curriculum-style warmup schedule to smoothly transition from coarse supervision to fully differentiable training. The MMF formulation unifies and generalizes existing consistency-based and flow-matching methods, while avoiding expensive higher-order derivatives. Empirical results across image synthesis and trajectory modeling tasks demonstrate that MMF achieves competitive sample quality, robust convergence, and strong generalization, particularly under low-data or out-of-distribution settings.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2508.17426,
  title  = {Modular MeanFlow: Towards Stable and Scalable One-Step Generative Modeling},
  author = {Haochen You and Baojing Liu and Hongyang He},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2508.17426},
  year   = {2025}
}

Comments

Accepted as a conference paper at PRCV 2025

R2 v1 2026-07-01T05:03:35.515Z