SkymapGen

SkymapGen is a desktop tool for generating and previewing equirectangular 360 sky maps from text prompts. It combines a Tauri/Vite/Three.js interface with a Python Diffusers generation pipeline, so generated panoramas can be viewed immediately inside an interactive sphere.

Features

• Generate equirectangular PNG sky maps from text prompts.
• Preview maps in a full-screen Three.js 360 viewer with orbit controls.
• Keep a thumbnail dock of generated maps from the local output/ folder.
• Persist generation settings in the app, including size, steps, guidance, scheduler, model paths, upscaling, and seam inpainting.
• Cancel an active generation from the UI.
• Store the enriched prompt in PNG metadata for later display.
• Write generation logs to logs/.

Requirements

• macOS, Linux, or Windows with Tauri prerequisites installed.
• Node.js and npm.
• Rust and Cargo for the Tauri desktop shell.
• Python 3.10 recommended. run.sh prefers python3.10 when available and falls back to python3.
• Enough RAM/VRAM for SDXL generation. Apple Silicon MPS and CUDA are detected automatically when available.

Python dependencies are listed in requirements.txt. JavaScript dependencies are listed in package.json.

Model Files

The app is offline-first by default. It will use local files or cached Hugging Face assets unless downloads are explicitly enabled.

Recommended local files:

• models/sdxl360Diffusion_v10.safetensors for the SDXL 360 checkpoint.
• RealESRGAN_x4plus.pth in the project root if you enable Real-ESRGAN upscaling.

If the SDXL 360 checkpoint is missing, the generator can load ProGamerGov/sdxl-360-diffusion from the Hugging Face cache, or download it when downloads are enabled.

Quick Start

./run.sh

The script will:

1. Create .venv/ if needed.
2. Install Python requirements.
3. Install npm dependencies if node_modules/ is missing.
4. Start the Tauri dev app with npm run tauri dev.

To allow missing Hugging Face assets to download during startup or generation:

SKYMAP_ALLOW_DOWNLOADS=1 ./run.sh

Manual Setup

python3.10 -m venv .venv
source .venv/bin/activate
pip install --upgrade pip
pip install -r requirements.txt
npm install

Start the desktop app:

npm run tauri dev

Build the web assets only:

npm run build

Build a Tauri app bundle:

npm run tauri build

Desktop Usage

1. Launch the app.
2. Enter a prompt in the bottom prompt bar.
3. Open Settings to adjust generation parameters.
4. Click Generate.
5. The generated panorama is saved to output/ and loaded into the 360 viewer.

During generation, the Generate button changes to Cancel. Existing PNG maps in output/ are shown in the thumbnail dock, and can be selected or deleted from the app.

Default desktop generation settings:

• Size: 1536x768
• Steps: 25
• Guidance: 6.5
• Scheduler: dpmsolver-sde
• Upscale: none
• Seam inpainting: disabled
• Model: local models/sdxl360Diffusion_v10.safetensors when present, otherwise ProGamerGov/sdxl-360-diffusion
• Base model: stabilityai/stable-diffusion-xl-base-1.0
• VAE: madebyollin/sdxl-vae-fp16-fix

CLI Usage

You can run the Python generator directly:

source .venv/bin/activate
python generate_equirect.py \
  --prompt "wide alpine meadow at sunset" \
  --output-dir output \
  --width 1536 \
  --height 768 \
  --steps 25 \
  --guidance 6.5 \
  --scheduler dpmsolver-sde \
  --upscale none

Useful options:

• --output PATH: write to a specific PNG path.
• --output-dir DIR: choose the output directory when --output is not set.
• --model-path VALUE: use a Hugging Face model id or local model path.
• --base-model VALUE: SDXL base pipeline used when the 360 model only provides a UNet.
• --vae-model VALUE: VAE repo/path for SDXL models.
• --scheduler euler|euler_a|heun|ddim|dpmsolver|dpmsolver-sde: override the scheduler.
• --upscale none|realesrgan|topaz: post-process with no upscaler, Real-ESRGAN, or Topaz Photo AI.
• --seam-inpaint: shift and inpaint the wrap seam before saving.
• --allow-downloads: allow missing model files to be downloaded.

The generator automatically appends , equirectangular 360 view to prompts that do not already include that suffix.

Outputs

• Generated PNGs are saved in output/.
• Log files from desktop generations are saved in logs/.
• PNG metadata includes a prompt text field containing the enriched prompt.
• Temporary generation folders are created under the project root and cleaned up by the generator.

Generated outputs, model weights, local caches, virtual environments, and build artifacts are ignored by Git.

Troubleshooting

If model loading fails in offline mode, either place the required files locally, warm the Hugging Face cache, or rerun with:

SKYMAP_ALLOW_DOWNLOADS=1 ./run.sh

If Real-ESRGAN upscaling fails, make sure RealESRGAN_x4plus.pth exists in the project root and the Python requirements are installed.

If generation is slow or memory constrained, reduce width, height, or steps, disable seam inpainting, and keep upscaling off.

Project Layout

.
|-- generate_equirect.py       # Diffusers generation and post-processing CLI
|-- run.sh                     # One-command development launcher
|-- src/                       # Vite/Three.js frontend
|-- src-tauri/                 # Tauri Rust desktop backend
|-- configs/                   # SDXL single-file loading config
|-- public/                    # Static frontend assets
|-- models/                    # Local model weights, ignored by Git
|-- output/                    # Generated PNG maps, ignored by Git
`-- logs/                      # Desktop generation logs, ignored by Git