A quick update... less angry! 😅

This is a V2 of my previous article, less angry (it was done a bit in the heat of the moment), i'll do a better job at doing a real good comparaison of what i see as the current state of Illustrious models. In any case, this one should be readable 😊

Hi all and welcome to newcomers! 💕

Intro

For anyone not knowing me yet, most of my journey on GenAI is about playing with checkpoints, training/merging and the math associated, more than actually making pretty pictures with it (i still enjoy the pretty pictures 😁)

I do all my gen locally on a good old laptop with a Nividia GeForce GTX 1060 (6 GB VRAM 👌) and sometimes rent a GPU instance for more heavy stuff. This means generating anything worthwhile take a LOOONG TIME, even when using SDXL and derivatives.

And while it is a fun journey, it is quite frustrating.

While building my checkpoints, i try as much as possible to avoid copying styles (or get away from them if it started this way) and forbid myself to straight up steal real artists work (that's an absolute no-go for me).

But i did still find myself liking a lot the style of a checkpoint i saw here a while back which lead me to create HoJ. This was my first test at a real finetuning of a checkpoint, with a dataset i made myself that is available here: https://huggingface.co/datasets/n-Arno/juicy

Now, while i was trying to build a new version of this checkpoint, i had to reflect on something that make me mad a bit... A lot of pictures i like look very much alike and they are all in the end a derivative a style from Niji... even HoJ in the end! since Psychonex was built using pictures from Niji (which i only realised much later 😭).

The Morimee Niji LoRA is in a lot of generation (along with a pair of others and/or alternative giving the same result). This is an artist style too you would argue, and you are right. Morimee is making a specific subset of goth looking pictures using Niji... and when i did my own take on this, mixing BancinJuice to get a deviated version, i played right into the Niji trap and started doing exactly what i wanted to avoid...

Which means i'll have to do better in the future 💪

A "quick" update

• I am almost to 1k followers! Thanks everybody! I'll definitly do a bounty for the 1k ❤

• The merger tool mentionned in this article has not been released... because i realized there is already a lot of tools far better 😱 => https://github.com/ljleb/sd-mecha being the one that looks/feels the better i have seen. I may try to build on it instead of redoing stuff now that i have made it once myself 😉

• I still didn't make neither my article on LoRA training nor my OC LoRA... because i am stuck on wanting them perfect. I really need to just go with the flow 😅

• The change in moderation and everything on Civitai is really painful and nobody likes changes. I can understand somewhat the idea behind all this, but still it has some awful consequences... one of them being seeing very implicated creators leaving or being straight up banned 😥

• Open moment about Buzz: IllusP0s and IllusN3g still drive my Buzz generation and allow me to post other stuff and tips. Thanks to everyone using them! 💖 This helped me for example release UnNamedIXL_V2 as a realistic checkpoint and make it win the bid war two times for a total cost of 17777 Buzz which the checkpoint is not compensating. I am wondering if i should try and keep it up or not, it is clearly not what i am searching for...

• My toy embedding converter made me jump to the top 10 in asset creators?!? 😱(well, not anymore, but it was nice for a time)

• I have dropped for now the idea of releasing an "asian inspired" checkpoint and writing an article on LoRA merging. Both felt wrong at one point. I still need to release Yoni-Pony V2...

• I have stopped trying to keep my checkpoints and LoRA under control on other websites. I just do like they don't exists and be done with it. My main issue was people trying to monetize something that should NOT be monetized, not blocking merges and stuff. And i don't use those website... because they have horrible UX/UI 😝 (really, that's the only and main reason. I work in IT. If the UI is shit, i don't use it. Also a reason i am NOT on discord).

• But i still need to thank https://pixai.art/. I realized too late that i never backed up BancinIXL Next and V0 and deleted them from Civitai at one point: They were basically lost... but i managed very easily to claim the automatic copy they made and download them back. So, silver lining i guess. 😊

• Shoutout to some of the incredible people i have been interacting with, check their great work (but be aware, NSFW incoming 😉)

  • https://civitai.com/user/BiohazardBailee

  • https://civitai.com/user/rambo943

  • https://civitai.com/user/Aijalon

  • https://civitai.com/user/Neural_Lens

  • https://civitai.com/user/eroto

  • https://civitai.com/user/DarkFun

  • https://civitai.com/user/mommymia

  • https://civitai.com/user/Blindparty

  • https://civitai.com/user/Ssssslippery

  • https://civitai.com/user/TurinBjorn

  • https://civitai.com/user/DeskGrenade

  • https://civitai.com/user/Hapse

  • https://civitai.com/user/Edenfel

  • https://civitai.com/user/Sexiam

  • https://civitai.com/user/uhlrik

  • https://civitai.com/user/missfidonyo

  • https://civitai.com/user/Gladas

  • and of course, if you weren't aware, the new account of BlackSnowSkill

Thank you all for reading! 💕💖