SakuraMix XL is a three-way anime checkpoint merge tuned for soft pastel, light-novel style illustration - gentle diffused light, delicate shading and a tender romantic mood, while keeping the stable anatomy of the Illustrious ecosystem.

Recipe: 0.45 x Shiitake-Mix (v2.0) + 0.30 x WAI-illustrious-SDXL (v17) + 0.25 x Illustrious-XL-v1.0, applied to the UNet only (VAE and text encoder inherited from the first model).

What you get:

• Soft pastel palette and delicate light rendering from Shiitake-Mix

• - Stable anatomy, posing and prompt adherence from WAI-illustrious

• - A balanced, broadly compatible anime base from Illustrious-XL v1.0

Great for light-novel cover art, spring and cherry blossom scenes, gentle portrait work, romance and slice-of-life illustration, soft-focus mood pieces and pastel character art. Add 'soft light, pastel colors, delicate shading' to the prompt for the strongest effect.

[Recommended settings] Sampler DPM++ 2M or Euler a, 28-32 steps, CFG 7, 832x1216. Danbooru-style tags work best. Use bf16 where possible - fp16 can soften output.

[License] CreativeML Open RAIL-M, inherited from the base models. Please credit the base models if you redistribute. Part of the merged-checkpoint series.