When ControlNet Meets Inexplicit Masks: A Case Study of ControlNet on its Contour-following Ability

Wenjie Xuan, Yufei Xu, Shanshan Zhao, Chaoyue Wang, Juhua Liu, Bo Du, Dacheng Tao

Abstract: ControlNet excels at creating content that closely matches precise contours in user-provided masks. However, when these masks contain noise, as a frequent occurrence with non-expert users, the output would include unwanted artifacts. This paper first highlights the crucial role of controlling the impact of these inexplicit masks with diverse deterioration levels through in-depth analysis. Subsequently, to enhance controllability with inexplicit masks, an advanced Shape-aware ControlNet consisting of a deterioration estimator and a shape-prior modulation block is devised. The deterioration estimator assesses the deterioration factor of the provided masks. Then this factor is used in a modulation block to adaptively adjust the model's contour-following ability, which helps it dismiss the noise part in the inexplicit masks. Extensive experiments prove its effectiveness in encouraging ControlNet to interpret inaccurate spatial conditions robustly rather than blindly following the given contours, suitable for diverse kinds of conditions. We showcase application scenarios like modifying shape priors and composable shape-controllable generation. Codes are available at github.

External IDs:doi:10.1145/3664647.3680692