This new model is best around 11-15 steps, but skin detail is still good. What started to get me about realistic models was the lack of support for non-real prompts; if I wanted to prompt a non-real skin color like blue or purple / and eye colors (like red or purple) I couldn’t. So, my focus this time was realistic, but capable of producing fantasy / sci-fi.

Illustrious

This is my foray into Illustrious models. I was so close to finishing a Pony v3 version and maybe I still will, but I don’t see as much interest in it these days. Anyways, Illustrious is a hard model to develop a realistic style for. I was originally drawn there because of the light contrast in v-pred... And after so many failed attempts I gave up for now. I still think there’s some good lighting control in this version but not as good as v-pred could have gotten. But lots of Illustrious models have either too smooth skin or this weird film grain that looks splotchy so wanted to give it a try.

I’ve trained this model from the ground up, training on about 1500 images which I manually tagged. My aim is to give a lot of control words to users... I’m still trying to find the right balance of tokens vs natural prompts and padding, so tags might not always work. It is also a DMD2 model, so trade off on CFG guidance vs Steps. I definitely will be tinkering with this in the future on newer releases.

THIS IS A HIGH RESOLUTION MODEL. It is trained on 1280 pixel images.

Settings:

VAE: VAE is now baked in.

Sampling Methods: Euler A gives best results this time around, wanted to keep it simple. LCM can work too but it tends to smooth out details like skin and textures, but you might want this. One trick is to use LCM as main sampler and then Euler A for Hires to add a bit more detail back.

Schedule Type: Karras works best, Align Your Steps and Turbo works pretty good too.

Steps: As mentioned above, I balanced this around 11-15. If you want to get to 4-5 range, you can mix in lora:dmd2_sdxl_4step_lora: 0.4 . However, there are some sacrifices in details and your ability t use much range on CFG (which is already limited).

CFG Scale: Between 1 - 2. The lower the number, the more neutral and realistic the colors, higher is a little bit more vibrant. But let me warn you, if you use a low number it hinders your ability to use a negative prompt if that is important to you. At 1, negative prompt is disabled, at 1.5 I had a hard time getting the negative prompts to be consistent. I found at 2 that it actually starts to listen. If you use the 4-5 range above, you’ll be limited to 1 - 1.25 (again limiting negative prompt).

Resolutions: This is a high resolution model, so it’s best at scale 1280, however, you can absolutely still use it at 1024.

1280x1280

1152x1408

1024x1536

896x1664

Hi-Res. fix: Because the resolution is already high, I would limit your Upscale By ratio to 1.25. You can do 1.5 if you want to but it will be slow. I use 4x_NMKD-Superscale-SP_178000_G as my upscaler of choice. Steps match sampling. Denoising at 0.25. Pretty standard.

TAG GUIDE

This guide is a reference, it does not mean the model will follow it all the time and it is not comprehensive as Illustrious itself has tons of tags.

QUALITY

You don’t need all the masterpiece, very awa, year 5000 filler tags. Use if you want, but it’s a waste of a token if you ask me. If you want you can use anything with the word quality / resolution, like best quality, high quality, amazing quality, high resolution, or bad / low quality in negative. They are not needed, the quality should be pretty good out of the box.

CAMERA

Zoom:

Closeup / Portrait, Medium Shot, Cowboy Shot, Full Shot

I had more tags but they are very inconsistent.

Angle / Orientation:

High Angle / From Above

Low Angle / From Below

Side View

Back View / From Behind

Upside Down (head is closes to camera than body)

Titled Angle, Dutch Angle (Had this working and now it’s not)

Focus: Say the part of the body you want to focus on for a closeup. Examples:

Feet Focus, Face Focus, Back Focus, Breast Focus, Butt/Ass Focus... You get the idea.

STYLE

Realistic Style, Anime Style

Base Style (don’t have to add anything): Just my own personal style I like and is default

Realistic Style: More photo like, more skin blemishes, skin detail, less cleft chins, more variety in ethnicity

Anime Style: Smoothed out skin, larger eyes, variety in hair colors and styles and facial expressions

Cosplay

This is still experimental, I had it working so well in my not released Pony 3 model. Sigh. Anyways, if you add the tag cosplay , it will take the character and have someone look like they are dressing up as that person, rather than it look just like them.  Still working on this, more successful if you use the realistic style

No People

I’m realizing I didn’t do a great job of this so this is one area for improvement, but if you want to get rid of people showing up, here are a few tips:

Use the subject you want and then photography.  Examples:

Food Photography, Landscape Photography, Macro Photography, Product Photography, Wildlife Photography

No person, No People

Lighting

They don’t all work all the time but give them a try:

dim lighting
Dark lighting / room
studio lighting
natural lighting
soft lighting
candlelit lighting
indoor lighting
outside lighting
bright lighting
moody lighting
dramatic lighting
stage lighting
[color] lighting / filter.  Best paired with Dim Lighting and Dark Room / Lighting

BODY

Skin Color:

fair skin, light skin, pale skin, olive skin, tan skin, medium skin, dark skin, black skin, white skin, grey skin, red skin, orange skin, yellow skin, green skin, blue skin, purple skin

Sizes / Shapes:

Thin, Petite, Slender, Slim, Curvy, Chubby, Fat, Athletic, Muscular, Thick Thighs, Thigh Gap

Breast Slider:

flat chest, small boobs, perky breasts, medium boobs, large boobs, huge boobs.  Can use boobs or breasts

Butt Slider:

small butt, large / round butt, big / huge butt

Facial Control:

High Cheekbones
Sharp Face
Round Face
Long Face
Cute Nose (gives more of a rounded nose)
Parted Lips
Open Mouth
Full Lips (puffy lip look)
Tongue Out
Eyes Closed

Makeup / Markings:

Eyeliner
Blush / Blushing
[color] lipstick
Lipgloss (shiny)
Tattoo / Tattoo on [body part]
Freckles

Eye Color:

Blue Eyes
Green Eyes
Red Eyes
Pink Eyes
Purple Eyes
Orange Eyes
Yellow Eyes
Black Eyes
Brown Eyes
Grey Eyes
Amber Eyes
Hazel Eyes
Heterochromia
Glowing Eyes

Expressions:

Happy / Smiling
Sad
Neutral Expression
Serious Expression
Sexy Expression
Playful Expression
Angry
Surprised Expression / Shocked Expression

Poses:

Standing, Sitting, Kneeling, Squatting, Doggy Pose, Laying on Stomach, Laying on Side, Arm Support (leaning on an arm), Leaning Back, Handstand, Leg Split, Leg(s) Up (Leg if you just want one, Legs if you want both), Yoga Pose, Bent Over, Legs Spread, m-pose (laying back and legs are spread with knees up), Bent Knee

Anthro (Furry) / Creatures

[Creature] = Just creature

[Creature] Girl / Woman = A woman dressed up as that creature.

[Creature] Girl / Woman, anthro / anthropomorphic = Changing into that creature (mileage may vary and could be a complete furry)
[Creature] Girl / Woman, furry = Well... A Furry

Also trained on non-real creatures:

Slime Girl, Tieflings, Elves (including dark elves, and night elves), Demons / Succubus, Fairies, Giantess, Monsters, Goblins, Orcs, Dwarves, Lamia (half snake, but pair with half snake half girl for better results), Oni, Robots, probably missing some.

This is not my model, i take no credit . all credit goes to creator @

https://civitai.com/models/563148?modelVersionId=1623887