Title: CMT: Mid-Training for Efficient Learning of Consistency, Mean Flow, and Flow-Map Models
Primary area: generative models
Keywords: Flow Map Models, Consistency Models, Mean Flow, Mid-Training, Diffusion Model, Generative Models

Abstract: Flow map models such as Consistency Models (CM) and Mean Flow (MF) enable few-step generation by learning the long jump of the ODE solution of diffusion models, yet training remains unstable, sensitive to hyperparameters, and costly. Initializing from a pre-trained diffusion model helps, but still requires converting infinitesimal steps into a long-jump map, leaving instability unresolved. We introduce *mid-training*, the first concept and practical method that inserts a lightweight intermediate stage between the (diffusion) pre-training and the final flow map training (i.e., post-training) for vision generation. Concretely, *Consistency Mid-Training* (CMT) is a compact and principled stage that trains a model to map points along a solver trajectory from a pre-trained model, starting from a prior sample, directly to the solver-generated clean sample. It yields a trajectory-consistent and stable initialization. This initializer outperforms random and diffusion-based baselines and enables fast, robust convergence without heuristics. Initializing post-training with CMT weights further simplifies flow map learning.  Empirically, CMT achieves state of the art two step FIDs: 1.97 on CIFAR-10, 1.32 on ImageNet 64$\times$64, and 1.84 on ImageNet 512$\times$512, while using up to 98% less training data and GPU time, compared to CMs. On ImageNet 256$\times$256, CMT reaches 1-step FID 3.34 while cutting total training time by about 50% compared to MF from scratch (FID 3.43). This establishes CMT as a principled, efficient, and general framework for training flow map models.

TL;DR: We introduce Consistency Mid-Training (CMT), a lightweight prior stage that stabilizes flow-map training, reduces training cost by up to 98%, and achieves state-of-the-art FIDs in few-step generation.