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    Preview 106644493

    This is an experimental checkpoint that combines some of the best realistic Illustrious models with bigASP 2.5. It worked.

    BTW, v2.4 is now available here! Give it a try!

    鉂わ笍 If you like Snakebite, you can help offset the cost of training:

    Buy liftweights a Coffee

    Why it matters


    bigASP has great prompt adherence but it is wildly inconsistent as far as style and composition. It feels like a base model with untapped potential. Dialing in the right settings is like trying to solve a Rubik's Cube.

    Illustrious models, on the other hand, lose many concepts when going 3D. They're hit-or-miss even with fairly popular booru tags. But the lighting and composition of these weights are still 馃憣

    I wanted to see if we can get the best of both worlds, and it turns out we kinda can! Careful block merging is the key. We can inject bigASP's output_blocks.0 to acquire much of its conceptual knowledge. Adding its middle_block.2 seems to reduce anatomical issues (otherwise, you'll get a lot of extra arms and fingers.)

    First impressions

    • Best prompt adherence for a realistic SDXL model I've ever seen. And no, not just for smut. (But especially for smut)

    • Compatible with booru tags as well as natural language. I think a mixed prompt approach is best: I use about 70% tags (no underscores) and 30% natural language in a prompt.

    • Understands bigASP's style tags to an extent, including stuff like masterpiece quality and 35mm.

    • It *feels* like something new and worth exploring. Don't sleep on bigASP!

    Drawbacks

    • Illustrious 2.0 models support resolutions up to 1024x1440 or 1024x1536 without horrific stretching of anatomy (e.g. longcat-type torsos), but bigASP's optimal resolution is only 832x1216... and I don't recommend going above that in Snakebite. If you do, the anatomy will be mostly okay (which is surprising), but image composition becomes very odd and unpleasant.

    • Since we're in a strange new latent space, your existing LoRAs won't work very well. But they're worth retraining.


    The Turbo variant is better for inference. It's super fast and has slightly improved aesthetics. The non-turbo version is useful for finetuning, and it can produce nice textures if you don't mind waiting 25+ steps.

    Turbo

    • 8 or 9 steps

    • LCM sampler

    • CFG 1

    • Custom sigmas below, or simple

    Full

    • 20 to 28 steps

    • Euler ancestral sampler

    • CFG 3 to 4

    • Custom sigmas below, or simple

    Custom sigma curve (you can use comfyui-kjnodes to apply):

    15, 8, 4, 2, 2, 1, 0.4, 0.2, 0


    If you're getting mangled limbs, you can often salvage the image by adjusting the first few values of your sigma curve. Here's one that is more stable for certain prompts:

    14, 5, 2, 2, 2, 1, 0.4, 0.2, 0


    If you're still getting body horror, you can try the following quality tags (you'll need ComfyUI-ppm to apply negative weights to your positive prompt):

    masterpiece quality, realistic photo, (worst quality,:-1) (mutated,:-1)

    Snakebite is very responsive to stylistic terms, especially by IL standards. Keep the extra "fluff" to a minimum - almost every token I've tried has a significant impact on the picture.

    Finally, I suggest trying the CLIPAttentionMultiply node. If you boost the q and v parameters, it will effectively cause your image to become more "Illustrious-like": cleaner, more stable, but less realistic and (usually) less adherent to the prompt. Set both values to 3 for a very clean image.

    BIGASP'S CLIP IS NOW IN PLAY!

    In versions 1.3 and up, Snakebite includes a little of bigASP's CLIP, which means you can take advantage of more style prompts. Experiment with different terms to see what works. Personally, I keep it simple - this will usually improve your image without any side effects:

    high quality, sharp focus


    Which version is for me?

    If you're wondering which version of the model to use, here's a TL;DR:

    • v1.4 = next-level realism, jaw-dropping textures, very stable, slightly less vibrant than previous versions and less capable of non-photographic images

    • v1.3 = good anatomy, good backgrounds, good coherence

    • v1.2 = best punchy colors

    • v1.1 = most influence from bigASP (excluding CLIP), dull colors, a failed experiment TBH

    • v1.0 = impressively creative but very unstable


    If you like the model or use it for further finetuning, please let me know! I'd love to see the results. 馃挭

    Description

    Full version of v1.3 with acceleration techniques disabled. Not recommended for inference. Useful for finetuning.

    FAQ

    Comments (11)

    VigoVonHomburgOct 18, 2025
    CivitAI

    Can this work with SwarmUI?

    liftweights
    Author
    Oct 18, 2025

    It should, as far as I know. 馃檪

    belemberOct 18, 2025

    It works with SwarmUI.

    _8_I_8_Oct 19, 20251 reaction
    CivitAI

    Turbo mode is impressive. Thank you.

    dobomex761604Oct 19, 20251 reaction
    CivitAI

    Interestingly, I get correct hands with 1.2 turbo, but wrong hands with 1.3 turbo. Impressive models nonetheless, thank you!

    solss_Oct 21, 20252 reactions

    I think 1.2 is the best in my experience. BigAsp has some tendency to bring some not so aesthetically pleasing female forms to the forefront, like it was trained on bottom of the barrel porno mags primarily. 1.4 brings more of that to the surface. Competent model sure, but the females are looking like weathered truck stop workers and less like women anyone would be interested in generating.

    dobomex761604Oct 21, 20251 reaction

    @solss_聽"bottom of the barrel porno mags" sounds so cruel and personal for some reason XD

    However, maybe you are right, because it absolutely doesn't like wide images. Looks like it was trained on low-quality vertical shots only.

    solss_Oct 21, 20251 reaction

    @dobomex761604聽Lol. I love both BigAsp for what it can do, and the breadth of what it contains and is capable of, and Snakebite too of course! But just speaking aesthetically, from my tastes, the more of BigAsp that comes through, the less beautiful the women become. Both in their facial features and their figures. I don't remember off the top of my head how many million photos BigAsp was trained on, but the dataset wasn't curated for aesthetics it seems, mostly for versatility and SDXL expansion. For my use case, 1.2 has the best outputs. I retested the same seed across my favorite images with the small prompt adjustments recommended in some cases with the later models. Just a matter of taste. No offense intended to any one creator at all.

    liftweights
    Author
    Oct 22, 20251 reaction

    @solss_聽It was trained on 13 million images. Pretty nuts. A lot of it is porn. I'm evaluating it more closely now and I can confirm that the new facial features we're seeing in 1.4 are mostly coming from bigASP. The features are being emphasized by one of the aesthetic LoRAs I merged in, possibly at too high of a weight. But it's cool to see what lies "under the surface" so to speak.

    bigASP is capable of so much, but a lot of it is impossible to reach with prompting alone.

    DoroArmyOct 23, 20252 reactions

    @solss_聽I totally agree. Images from Bigasp are realistic but tacky鈥攖hey're far from beautiful or pretty. I also hope the next version of Snakebite takes only the realism from Bigasp. If it can be realistic while following Illustrious's high prompt adherence, I think it would become the absolute best model.

    SqueezesOct 19, 20252 reactions
    CivitAI

    Found this via your reddit post a few days ago and this really has been impressive. Irrespective of it's LoRA compatability issues this does seem like abetter base model than most 'realistic' checkpoints for SDXL or Pony/Illust

    Checkpoint
    Illustrious

    Details

    Downloads
    451
    Platform
    CivitAI
    Platform Status
    Available
    Created
    10/19/2025
    Updated
    4/30/2026
    Deleted
    -

    Files

    snakebite_v13.safetensors

    Mirrors

    CivitAI (1 mirrors)

    Available On (2 platforms)

    Same model published on other platforms. May have additional downloads or version variants.