Ying Liu

Yiqi Liang, Ying Liu, Dandan Long et al.

While portrait sketch generation is a special task in sketch synthesis, most existing methods are pixel-based, limiting their interpretability and editability. With the rise of vector generation techniques, representing sketches using vector elements may provide more flexible manipulation. However, due to the overlapping nature of vector graphics and the coarse detail modeling, existing vectorization methods struggle to capture facial integrity and fine-grained details, and lack semantic control. To address these issues, we propose PortraVec, a framework for converting pixel-based portrait images into vector sketches with text control. Specifically, we propose a two-stage image-guided generation module using Attention-aware Offset Sampling to capture face structure while correcting detail deviations, and a text-guided manipulation module based on Region-based Parameter Freezing to enable local semantic editing while maintaining global consistency. Experiments show that PortraVec achieves superior structural consistency, visual fidelity, and semantic controllability compared to state-of-the-art methods.

Hong Zhang, Ying Liu, Romit Maulik

Classical neural ODEs trained with explicit methods are intrinsically limited by stability, crippling their efficiency and robustness for stiff learning problems that are common in graph learning and scientific machine learning. We present a semi-implicit neural ODE approach that exploits the partitionable structure of the underlying dynamics. Our technique leads to an implicit neural network with significant computational advantages over existing approaches because of enhanced stability and efficient linear solves during time integration. We show that our approach outperforms existing approaches on a variety of applications including graph classification and learning complex dynamical systems. We also demonstrate that our approach can train challenging neural ODEs where both explicit methods and fully implicit methods are intractable.