# High-Fidelity Two-Step Image Generation via Teacher-Aligned End-to-End Distillation

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2606.12575 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2606.12575/

## Key facts

- Cited by 2 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Placed in Diffusion foundations and sampling, one of 14 directions in Diffusion models.
- Builds on 32 of its 34 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 10 Jun 2026.

## Placed in

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

## Builds on (most cited first, 30 of 32)

- [Denoising Diffusion Probabilistic Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2006.11239/) (2020)
- [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)
- [Flow Matching for Generative Modeling](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2210.02747/) (2022)
- [Flow Straight and Fast: Learning to Generate and Transfer Data with Rectified Flow](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2209.03003/) (2022)
- [DPM-Solver: A Fast ODE Solver for Diffusion Probabilistic Model Sampling in Around 10 Steps](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2206.00927/) (2022)
- [Consistency Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.01469/) (2023)
- [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)
- [Adversarial Diffusion Distillation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.17042/) (2023)
- [Improved Distribution Matching Distillation for Fast Image Synthesis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2405.14867/) (2024)
- [ELLA: Equip Diffusion Models with LLM for Enhanced Semantic Alignment](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.05135/) (2024)
- [UniPC: A Unified Predictor-Corrector Framework for Fast Sampling of Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2302.04867/) (2023)
- [InstaFlow: One Step is Enough for High-Quality Diffusion-Based Text-to-Image Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2309.06380/) (2023)
- [DeepCache: Accelerating Diffusion Models for Free](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.00858/) (2023)
- [Simplifying, Stabilizing and Scaling Continuous-Time Consistency Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.11081/) (2024)
- [Fast High-Resolution Image Synthesis with Latent Adversarial Diffusion Distillation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.12015/) (2024)
- [Z-Image: An Efficient Image Generation Foundation Model with Single-Stream Diffusion Transformer](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2511.22699/) (2025)
- [Timestep Embedding Tells: It's Time to Cache for Video Diffusion Model](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2411.19108/) (2024)
- [Post-training Quantization on Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2211.15736/) (2022)
- [SDXL-Lightning: Progressive Adversarial Diffusion Distillation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2402.13929/) (2024)
- [Diff-Instruct: A Universal Approach for Transferring Knowledge From Pre-trained Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.18455/) (2023)
- [Structural Pruning for Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.10924/) (2023)
- [PTQD: Accurate Post-Training Quantization for Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.10657/) (2023)
- [Hyper-SD: Trajectory Segmented Consistency Model for Efficient Image Synthesis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.13686/) (2024)
- [X-Omni: Reinforcement Learning Makes Discrete Autoregressive Image Generative Models Great Again](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2507.22058/) (2025)
- [OneIG-Bench: Omni-dimensional Nuanced Evaluation for Image Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2506.07977/) (2025)
- [Phased Consistency Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2405.18407/) (2024)
- [Multistep Distillation of Diffusion Models via Moment Matching](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.04103/) (2024)

## Built on by (most cited first, 2 of 2)

- [An Empirical Study of Training Pixel-Space Text-to-Image Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2608.16887/) (2026)
- [AptAvatar: Fast and Vivid Long-Form Audio-Driven Video Generation for Production-Ready Avatars](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2607.24013/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Few-step diffusion distillation has become increasingly mature for 4-8-step generation, yet pushing further to 2 steps remains challenging. In this work, we introduce Z-Image Turbo++, a high-quality 2-step image generation model distilled from the 8-step Z-Image Turbo teacher. Our method addresses the central bottlenecks of increased task difficulty and limited model capacity in 2-step generation through three simple but effective design choices tailored to this regime. First, we propose Distribution-Aligned Adversarial Learning, which uses teacher-generated images rather than external real images as real samples for GAN training, providing a more attainable and informative adversarial target. Second, we adopt Step-Decoupled Parameterization, assigning independent model parameters to the two denoising steps to better match their distinct capacity demands. Third, we perform End-to-End Training with Iterative Regularization, allowing the first step to receive gradients from final image quality while preserving a meaningful intermediate generation through an explicit step-1 loss. Together, these designs substantially narrow the quality gap between 2-step and 8-step generation in both qualitative and quantitative evaluations, highlighting the potential of carefully tailored distillation strategies for improving the quality-efficiency trade-off in few-step generation.