# Transition Models: Rethinking the Generative Learning Objective

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.04394 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2509.04394/

## Key facts

- Cited by 34 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Placed in Diffusion foundations and sampling, one of 14 directions in Diffusion models.
- Builds on 81 of its 88 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 4 Sep 2025.

## Placed in

- Diffusion models / [Diffusion foundations and sampling](https://mlsanity.com/diffusion/diffusion-foundations-and-sampling/)

## Builds on (most cited first, 30 of 81)

- [Denoising Diffusion Probabilistic Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2006.11239/) (2020)
- [High-Resolution Image Synthesis with Latent Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2112.10752/) (2021)
- [GPT-4 Technical Report](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.08774/) (2023)
- [Denoising Diffusion Implicit Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2010.02502/) (2020)
- [Score-Based Generative Modeling through Stochastic Differential Equations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2011.13456/) (2020)
- [Diffusion Models Beat GANs on Image Synthesis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2105.05233/) (2021)
- [Scalable Diffusion Models with Transformers](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2212.09748/) (2022)
- [Flow Matching for Generative Modeling](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2210.02747/) (2022)
- [SDXL: Improving Latent Diffusion Models for High-Resolution Image Synthesis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2307.01952/) (2023)
- [Scaling Rectified Flow Transformers for High-Resolution Image Synthesis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.03206/) (2024)
- [Generative Modeling by Estimating Gradients of the Data Distribution](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1907.05600/) (2019)
- [Flow Straight and Fast: Learning to Generate and Transfer Data with Rectified Flow](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2209.03003/) (2022)
- [Elucidating the Design Space of Diffusion-Based Generative Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2206.00364/) (2022)
- [Improved Techniques for Training GANs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1606.03498/) (2016)
- [Large Scale GAN Training for High Fidelity Natural Image Synthesis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1809.11096/) (2018)
- [FlashAttention-2: Faster Attention with Better Parallelism and Work Partitioning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2307.08691/) (2023)
- [CogVideoX: Text-to-Video Diffusion Models with An Expert Transformer](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2408.06072/) (2024)
- [DPM-Solver: A Fast ODE Solver for Diffusion Probabilistic Model Sampling in Around 10 Steps](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2206.00927/) (2022)
- [Gemma 3 Technical Report](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.19786/) (2025)
- [Consistency Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.01469/) (2023)
- [LAION-400M: Open Dataset of CLIP-Filtered 400 Million Image-Text Pairs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2111.02114/) (2021)
- [Conceptual 12M: Pushing Web-Scale Image-Text Pre-Training To Recognize Long-Tail Visual Concepts](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2102.08981/) (2021)
- [MaskGIT: Masked Generative Image Transformer](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2202.04200/) (2022)
- [Visual Autoregressive Modeling: Scalable Image Generation via Next-Scale Prediction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.02905/) (2024)
- [One-step Diffusion with Distribution Matching Distillation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.18828/) (2023)
- [GenEval: An Object-Focused Framework for Evaluating Text-to-Image Alignment](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2310.11513/) (2023)
- [Improved Precision and Recall Metric for Assessing Generative Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1904.06991/) (2019)
- [DPM-Solver++: Fast Solver for Guided Sampling of Diffusion Probabilistic Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2211.01095/) (2022)
- [WorldSimBench: Towards Video Generation Models as World Simulators](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.18072/) (2024)
- [Latent Consistency Models: Synthesizing High-Resolution Images with Few-Step Inference](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2310.04378/) (2023)

## Built on by (most cited first, 30 of 34)

- [Improved Mean Flows: On the Challenges of Fastforward Generative Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2512.02012/) (2025)
- [AlphaFlow: Understanding and Improving MeanFlow Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2510.20771/) (2025)
- [Transition Matching Distillation for Fast Video Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2601.09881/) (2026)
- [AnyFlow: Any-Step Video Diffusion Model with On-Policy Flow Map Distillation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2605.13724/) (2026)
- [One-Step Generative Modeling via Wasserstein Gradient Flows](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2605.11755/) (2026)
- [TwinFlow: Realizing One-step Generation on Large Models with Self-adversarial Flows](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2512.05150/) (2025)
- [Agentic World Modeling: Foundations, Capabilities, Laws, and Beyond](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2604.22748/) (2026)
- [SoFlow: Solution Flow Models for One-Step Generative Modeling](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2512.15657/) (2025)
- [Adversarial Flow Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2511.22475/) (2025)
- [Parallel Decoding Distillation for Fast Image and Video Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2607.26004/) (2026)
- [Understand Before You Generate: Self-Guided Training for Autoregressive Image Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2509.15185/) (2025)
- [Bidirectional Normalizing Flow: From Data to Noise and Back](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2512.10953/) (2025)
- [Skywork UniPic 3.0: Unified Multi-Image Composition via Sequence Modeling](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2601.15664/) (2026)
- [MeanFlow Transformers with Representation Autoencoders](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2511.13019/) (2025)
- [Understanding, Accelerating, and Improving MeanFlow Training](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2511.19065/) (2025)
- [OMP: One-step Meanflow Policy with Directional Alignment](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2512.19347/) (2025)
- [Self-Evaluation Unlocks Any-Step Text-to-Image Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2512.22374/) (2025)
- [Stabilizing Consistency Training: A Flow Map Analysis and Self-Distillation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2601.22679/) (2026)
- [Transition Flow Matching](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.15689/) (2026)
- [Self-Adversarial One Step Generation via Condition Shifting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2604.12322/) (2026)
- [Extending One-Step Image Generation from Class Labels to Text via Discriminative Text Representation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2604.18168/) (2026)
- [Trajectory Forcing: Structure-First Generation with Controllable Semantic Trajectories](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2606.22527/) (2026)
- [BiFM: Bidirectional Flow Matching for Few-Step Image Editing and Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.24942/) (2026)
- [WTF?! Simulation-Free Reinforcement Learning with Wasserstein-Tilted Flow Maps](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2609.27033/) (2026)
- [FlowConsist: Make Your Flow Consistent with Real Trajectory](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2602.06346/) (2026)
- [Derivative Computation in PINNs: Automatic Differentiation, Finite Differences and Beyond](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2608.11020/) (2026)
- [FlashRender: Few-Step Generative Rendering via Camera-Controlled Video MeanFlow](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2609.03563/) (2026)
- [A Latent Distribution Perspective on Evaluating and Improving Latent Generative Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2609.24088/) (2026)
- [Scaling Versatile 3D Assets Editing with a Million-Scale Dataset](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2609.34271/) (2026)
- [WorldPlay2: Extending Real-Time Interactive World Models in Control and Horizon](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2609.35560/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

A fundamental dilemma in generative modeling persists: iterative diffusion models achieve outstanding fidelity, but at a significant computational cost, while efficient few-step alternatives are constrained by a hard quality ceiling. This conflict between generation steps and output quality arises from restrictive training objectives that focus exclusively on either infinitesimal dynamics (PF-ODEs) or direct endpoint prediction. We address this challenge by introducing an exact, continuous-time dynamics equation that analytically defines state transitions across any finite time interval. This leads to a novel generative paradigm, Transition Models (TiM), which adapt to arbitrary-step transitions, seamlessly traversing the generative trajectory from single leaps to fine-grained refinement with more steps. Despite having only 865M parameters, TiM achieves state-of-the-art performance, surpassing leading models such as SD3.5 (8B parameters) and FLUX.1 (12B parameters) across all evaluated step counts. Importantly, unlike previous few-step generators, TiM demonstrates monotonic quality improvement as the sampling budget increases. Additionally, when employing our native-resolution strategy, TiM delivers exceptional fidelity at resolutions up to 4096x4096.