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CalliMaster: Mastering Page-level Chinese Calligraphy via Layout-guided Spatial Planning

arXiv cs.CV / 3/16/2026

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Key Points

  • CalliMaster presents a unified framework that decouples spatial planning from content synthesis to balance layout composition and brushwork in page-level Chinese calligraphy generation.
  • It uses a coarse-to-fine Text → Layout → Image pipeline inside a single Multimodal Diffusion Transformer, with an initial planning stage that predicts character bounding boxes to establish global spatial arrangement.
  • The predicted layout then serves as a geometric prompt for content synthesis, where flow-matching renders high-fidelity brushwork.
  • The disentangled design enables controllable semantic re-planning, allowing users to resize or reposition characters while the model harmonizes surrounding void space and brush momentum.
  • Beyond generation, the approach extends to artifact restoration and forensic analysis, supporting digital cultural heritage tasks.

Abstract

Page-level calligraphy synthesis requires balancing glyph precision with layout composition. Existing character models lack spatial context, while page-level methods often compromise brushwork detail. In this paper, we present \textbf{CalliMaster}, a unified framework for controllable generation and editing that resolves this conflict by decoupling spatial planning from content synthesis. Inspired by the human cognitive process of ``planning before writing'', we introduce a coarse-to-fine pipeline \textbf{(Text \rightarrow Layout \rightarrow Image)} to tackle the combinatorial complexity of page-scale synthesis. Operating within a single Multimodal Diffusion Transformer, a spatial planning stage first predicts character bounding boxes to establish the global spatial arrangement. This intermediate layout then serves as a geometric prompt for the content synthesis stage, where the same network utilizes flow-matching to render high-fidelity brushwork. Beyond achieving state-of-the-art generation quality, this disentanglement supports versatile downstream capabilities. By treating the layout as a modifiable constraint, CalliMaster enables controllable semantic re-planning: users can resize or reposition characters while the model automatically harmonizes the surrounding void space and brush momentum. Furthermore, we demonstrate the framework's extensibility to artifact restoration and forensic analysis, providing a comprehensive tool for digital cultural heritage.