The Invoke canvas.The Invoke canvas.
Invoke workflow
Grayscale Matte Painting to Full-Color Concept

The Grayscale Matte Painting to Full-Color Concept workflow automatically generates a colorized and detailed version of a grayscale matte painting, adding realistic textures and lighting effects.

This enables environment artists and VFX teams to quickly iterate on matte paintings, moving from grayscale blocking to fully realized concept art in minutes.

How To Use

  1. Upload Your Sketch – Start by uploading a grayscale matte painting, sketch, or line-art drawing. This will serve as the foundation for the full-color rendering.
  2. Describe the Scene – Input a short description of the subject matter. This helps guide the model to generate a scene that aligns with your vision.
  3. Adjust Sketch Strength – Control how closely the AI should follow your sketch. A lower value allows more creative freedom, while a higher value sticks closely to the original outlines.
  4. Select Style Enhancements (Optional) – You can add style refinements such as cinematic lighting, lens effects, or artistic direction to fine-tune the final output.
  5. Choose a Model – Select the AI model that best suits your needs for image generation.
  6. Generate the Image – Click “Invoke” to process the sketch and apply the colorization and rendering.
  7. Review & Save – View the result in the gallery, make refinements if necessary, and save the final image to your project board.

How It Works

  1. Sketch Preprocessing – The uploaded grayscale sketch is processed using edge detection to extract the structural details.
  2. ControlNet Integration – A Hard Edge Detection model refines the input to ensure that key lines and structures are preserved.
  3. Prompt Construction – The user-provided description is combined with predefined style prompts to create a detailed AI prompt.
  4. AI Rendering – The system uses a Stable Diffusion XL model to interpret the sketch, apply textures, and generate a high-quality, full-color image.
  5. Denoising & Refinement – The model undergoes several iterations of denoising, adjusting colors and details to match the desired artistic style.
  6. Final Processing & Output – The completed image is stored in the user’s gallery, where it can be reviewed, further edited, or exported.

FAQs

The workflow is loading with errors or telling me that I don't have a model in my project. What do I do?
Can I use a different model with these workflows?
How should I structure my prompts?
The result I generated isn’t what I expected. What should I do?
"Moving towards creation of assets that will actually be placed in game is more demanding. However, a number of companies like Invoke… are focusing on developing effective specialized tools for game artists for both concept art and production assets."
VFX & Compositing