Guided Generation: Pose, Depth and Line
A step beyond image-to-image: instead of loosely following a reference, the model is held to a specific structural property of it — the pose of a figure, the depth of a scene, the lines of a drawing — while everything else is free.
You will meet these as named options in the interface rather than as anything you have to configure:
- Pose — extract a skeleton from a reference photo and generate a completely different character in exactly that pose. Solves the hardest part of figure work.
- Depth — preserve the spatial layout of a scene and restyle everything in it. Useful for keeping an architectural or environmental composition while changing its world.
- Edge or line art — follow the outlines of a drawing exactly. This is the one that matters most to illustrators: draw your own linework, let the model handle colour and rendering, and the drawing remains unambiguously yours.
- Scribble — the loose version of the same idea, for rough thumbnails.
Why this is the most important section here for working artists. Guided generation is what turns these tools from a slot machine into an instrument. You supply the drawing, the pose, the composition — the parts that require judgement and skill — and the model does the rendering labour. That is a defensible creative process, a repeatable one, and the one that survives contact with a client who asks how the image was made.
The most complete implementations are in the open-source tooling covered in the Deep Learning track, but usable versions now ship in OpenArt, Krea, Leonardo, Freepik and Photoshop — no installation required.