Update 7/7/2026

I decided to add an optional High Res Fix pass. Like everything in this model, its basic functionality that adds some nice polish to renders. I overlooked including it in my original version because I tend to mess around a lot in Topaz and clean things up there. That said, even I can benefit from some lazy mode upscaling. The High Res Fix pass is bypassed by default for newbies but you can enable it easily (Note: Leave the optional Clip Vision Loader bypassed unless you are using IP Adapter).

Lastly, newb friendly tip, avoid Karras for the High Res Pass. It can over-emphasize edges, folds, hair strands, fabric seams, and random “contour” lines when denoise is low. Illustrious already has strong line/style bias, and Karras in a low-denoise second pass can over-carve edges.

That's all. Enjoy the workflow and please post your renders to the gallery. I'd love to see what people create with it.

~Maris

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Disclaimer: I'm a hobbyist and relatively new so this workflow is nothing fancy, just some basic functions that I wish I had when I first started to help someone new get going with their first gens that won't totally suck.

This workflow is for Illustrious Checkpoints and other Illustrious variants. I have included some basic notes embedded to help someone get started. You can tweak the values to what you like, I included those that can help someone get started with relative ease and little fuss.

I tend to lean on Illustrious Realism when I'm testing out things I want to resemble photorealistic. In those cases switch the sampler to DPMPP_2M and the scheduler to karras. I love Illustrij when I want something that blends real with animated. Lately I've also been having fun with New Mecha which adds some gothic and dark flair really well (I included some samples of New Mecha from a recent batch of images in the showcase for this workflow).

I'm not an expert at anything so I'll try to answer questions honestly and faithfully but be prepared for the real possibility that "I don't know".

Enjoy and have fun!

~Maris