# RealDiffusion: Physics-informed Attention for Multi-character Storybook Generation

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2605.11927 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2605.11927/

## Key facts

- No citing papers in the map yet (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 34 of its 40 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 12 May 2026.

## Builds on (most cited first, 30 of 34)

- [Denoising Diffusion Probabilistic Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2006.11239/) (2020)
- [U-Net: Convolutional Networks for Biomedical Image Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1505.04597/) (2015)
- [High-Resolution Image Synthesis with Latent Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2112.10752/) (2021)
- [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)
- [Deep Unsupervised Learning using Nonequilibrium Thermodynamics](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1503.03585/) (2015)
- [Photorealistic Text-to-Image Diffusion Models with Deep Language Understanding](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2205.11487/) (2022)
- [Scalable Diffusion Models with Transformers](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2212.09748/) (2022)
- [Classifier-Free Diffusion Guidance](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2207.12598/) (2022)
- [Adding Conditional Control to Text-to-Image Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2302.05543/) (2023)
- [Scaling Rectified Flow Transformers for High-Resolution Image Synthesis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.03206/) (2024)
- [DreamBooth: Fine Tuning Text-to-Image Diffusion Models for Subject-Driven Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2208.12242/) (2022)
- [DreamFusion: Text-to-3D using 2D Diffusion](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2209.14988/) (2022)
- [CLIPScore: A Reference-free Evaluation Metric for Image Captioning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2104.08718/) (2021)
- [An Image is Worth One Word: Personalizing Text-to-Image Generation using Textual Inversion](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2208.01618/) (2022)
- [Imagen Video: High Definition Video Generation with Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2210.02303/) (2022)
- [Make-A-Video: Text-to-Video Generation without Text-Video Data](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2209.14792/) (2022)
- [Align your Latents: High-Resolution Video Synthesis with Latent Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2304.08818/) (2023)
- [IP-Adapter: Text Compatible Image Prompt Adapter for Text-to-Image Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2308.06721/) (2023)
- [Magic3D: High-Resolution Text-to-3D Content Creation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2211.10440/) (2022)
- [Multi-Concept Customization of Text-to-Image Diffusion](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2212.04488/) (2022)
- [Scientific Machine Learning through Physics-Informed Neural Networks: Where we are and What's next](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2201.05624/) (2022)
- [InstantID: Zero-shot Identity-Preserving Generation in Seconds](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2401.07519/) (2024)
- [PhotoMaker: Customizing Realistic Human Photos via Stacked ID Embedding](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.04461/) (2023)
- [FastComposer: Tuning-Free Multi-Subject Image Generation with Localized Attention](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.10431/) (2023)
- [StoryDiffusion: Consistent Self-Attention for Long-Range Image and Video Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2405.01434/) (2024)
- [Training-Free Consistent Text-to-Image Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2402.03286/) (2024)
- [TaleCrafter: Interactive Story Visualization with Multiple Characters](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.18247/) (2023)
- [Meta-learning PINN loss functions](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2107.05544/) (2021)
- [One-Shot Transfer Learning of Physics-Informed Neural Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2110.11286/) (2021)

## Abstract (arXiv)

While modern diffusion models excel at generating diverse single images, extending this to sequential generation reveals a fundamental challenge: balancing narrative dynamism with multi-character coherence. Existing methods often falter at this trade-off, leading to artifacts where characters lose their identity or the story stagnates. To resolve this critical tension, we introduce RealDiffusion, a unified framework designed to reconcile robust coherence with narrative dynamism. Heat diffusion serves as a dissipative prior that averages neighboring features along the sequence and removes high-frequency noise within the subject region. This suppresses attribute drift and stabilizes identity across frames. A region-aware stochastic process then introduces small perturbations that explore nearby modes and prevent collapse so the story maintains pose change and scene evolution. We thus introduce a lightweight, training-free Physics-informed Attention mechanism that injects controllable physical priors into the self-attention layers during inference. By modeling feature evolution as a configurable physical system, our method regularizes spatio-temporal relationships without suppressing intentional, prompt-driven changes. Extensive experiments demonstrate that RealDiffusion achieves substantial gains in character coherence while preserving narrative dynamism, outperforming state-of-the-art approaches. Code is available at https://github.com/ShmilyQi-CN/RealDiffusion.