Pixel LoRAs
A far cheaper way to paint pixel cities: small open image models, taught to paint the way Codex painted my map of Brasília.
The MiniDF map is painted frame by frame by Codex: a 3D render of the city goes in, a hand-made isometric pixel-art tile comes out. MiniDF (6,631 frames) and its São Paulo sibling MiniSP (1,083) used up a $500-a-month Codex plan, hitting its limit twice and waiting for resets: about $0.065 and a minute of waiting per frame. Here open models learn the same move with a small LoRA (a 33 MB add-on), from pairs of 3D render and Codex painting, so any city can be painted on a rented GPU or a home computer for a fraction of that.
Every run is judged with one number, LPIPS: how far the model’s painting is from Codex’s. Lower is closer. Rounds 1–3 were judged on 32 held-out Brasília frames. Now three open models race for ten rounds each (Qwen Image 2.1, FLUX.2 klein and Qwen-Image-Edit-2511), judged on one frozen test set that also covers landmarks, São Paulo, Rio and new world landmarks.
Current pick ↓What it costs ↓Training now ↓Test sheets ↓Open the map ↗Pick.
Leading model
Example
| Test set | Pick | Qwen Image 2.1 |
|---|
Why it leads
Not settled yet
Download the LoRAs
Cost.
| Option | All of MiniDF | vs Codex |
|---|---|---|
| Measuring… | ||
Live.
Models.
Test LPIPS per round · mean of the Brasília, landmark, São Paulo, Rio and world sets · lower is closer
The first rounds are training.
| Model | Round | Change | Test | Brasília | Landm. | São Paulo | Rio | World | Steps |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
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Reference rows are the round 1–3 Qwen models scored on the same test set. World scores appear once the world-landmark test views are painted.
Progress.
LPIPS per run · lower is closer to Codex
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Rounds.
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Sheets.
Log.
| Run | Change | LPIPS | Copy | Edges | Steps | Result |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
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- LPIPS
- Perceptual distance between the model’s painting of a held-out 3D render and the real Codex painting of the same frame, averaged over 32 fixed frames (16 at 3× detail, 16 at normal detail). The only number that decides.
- Copy guard
- Distance between the output and the 3D input. Below 0.30 the model is copying the photo-like render instead of painting, and the run is discarded.
- Edges
- How far the output’s edges are from the Codex painting’s: roads and buildings in place. A run more than 0.03 worse than the best is discarded.
- Noise floor
- The baseline run twice differs by 0.0145, so a change has to beat the best by more than that to count.