Introduction
There are already some great visual reference resources for Pony character and clothing tags (my recommendations at end of article), but I couldn't find a good visual reference for hidden style tags. A hidden style tag is an alphanumeric string of text that you can input into a prompt to indicate a style. So instead of using "Last of Us, Ellie", you can input "*us". I also have the word "female" in the prompt, which generates:
There are some differences, but I think both read pretty clearly as Ellie. But what happens when we adjust the prompt? The only thing we are going to change in this next example is "female" to "male".
The first image has barely changed despite the indication of "male" in the prompt, while the second image is using the base male prompt while using Ellie as a style. Depending on what you are trying to do, there's benefits and drawbacks to both.
Setup
To the end of having visual references for these tags, I'm compiling reference shots for each tag. The baseline images I used consist of a female, a male, Jinx (LoL), and Sephiroth (FF7). Here are the baseline images:
Now as an example, we will be adding the hidden tag "4kakzg" to the above image prompt. The resulting images are as follows:
Why Use These Tags?
The tags can be more useful than the full prompt names, since there's less chance of contextual mistakes. For instance, if you were to reference the Anime style of Orange, you'll get the style but the color orange and/or the fruit orange may bleed/appear in the image. In the example image below you get the style from the Anime Orange, but you also get orange coloring in the eyes, effects, and background. Assuming there is a hidden style tag for Orange, you theoretically should be able to remove the color/fruit issues by using it. Here is the image with the prompt "Style of the Anime Orange":
Another benefit of this format is that it helps with characters that have the same name or similar names and are from completely different series. If the two characters have their own hidden tags, then it's a quick and easy way to differentiate them without having to add the title/series they are from which could muddy the prompt.
Collection and Posts
I'll be making posts with groups of six tags in the above 2x2 image format. As I go through them, I will be putting them into a collection here: https://civitai.com/collections/6108851
Each post will define each image and it's associated tag in the description. Posts:
Post 1 tags - <baseline>, 2bd, 3yne, 131, 97arcb, 4rt - <>, N/A, unknown furry, N/A, unknown furry, N/A
Post 2 tags - 0ru, 4kakzg, 6sdgs, 8rj, NPRT, aax - unknown anime (Fate Stay Night?), unknown, unknown cartoon, unknown anime, unknown anime, unknown anime
Post 3 tags - 110zcoz, 2wf, 6zg, 9AG, 9uv, *dr - unknown cartoon, unknown cartoon, N/A, unknown cartoon, unknown cartoon, doctors outfit
Post 4 tags - *zj, aden, acuv, aazv, acm, *us - Stylized artists consisting of jcm2, Metal Owl (Aden12), TailzKim, unknown anime, unknown cartoon, Ellie from Last of Us.
Post 5 tags - adkb, 8um, 7x90um, aeno, aea, afpt - unknown cartoon, unknown cartoon, ishi_kei, Captain Celaen from My Little Pony, unknown, unknown
Post 6 tags - agio, agm, aguf, ahjv, ahvj, ails - Adagio Dazzle from My Little Pony, unknown cartoon (anime), Kaguya-sama: Love is War, unknown pony, unknown, feet concept.
Post 7 tags - aiud, ajl, ajm, akm, algd, alie - Maud Pie from My Little Pony, N/A, unknown anime (character), Kaguya-sama: Love is War, Hatterene from Pokemon, unknown furry (scaley).
Post 8 tags - aloe, alp, amd, amon, amoy, amu - Spa Ponies from My Little Pony, fat concept, unknown cartoon (realistic), Renamon from Digimon, unknown Anime, Riamu Yumemi from The Idolm@ster.
Post 9 tags - amui, aoa, apo, aqe, aqm, aqx - Unknown Anime, unknown pinup style, unknown risqué pinup style, unknown Anime, unknown Anime, unknown Anime.
Post 10 tags - arb, asm, asus, asvu, atee, atio - SuperBusty?, bleed from orgasm, N/A, Asuna blend, bleed from goatee, bleed from fellatio (no image).
Post 11 tags - ats, aua, ausm, aze, azv, bam - Unknown cartoon, Houshou Marine from Hololive (vtuber), unknown cartoon, unknown anime, unknown cartoon, unknown anime.
Post 12 tags - bave, bbq, bduc, bdvn, bea, benb - Artist Mina Cream, unknown anime style, unknown cartoon style, unknown furry style with NSFW leanings, Bea from Pokemon, artist Shiory (hentai artist).
Post 13 tags - bfix, bfu, bfwf, bhp, bifp, bih - Unknown cartoon style of short stacks, unknown cartoon style, unknown western style, bleed from artist bow (bhp), Artist peculiart, unknown anime style.
Post 14 tags - bjp, bke, bkm, bmwz, bmyb, bnp - Unknown cartoon style, unknown cartoon style, unknown cartoon style, unknown 3D style, unknown cartoon style, unknown cartoon anime style.
Examples
All examples have the full workflows I used in ComfyUI under the associated tagged image.
Prompts and Settings
Image generation details below for the 2x2 references.
Positive Prompts:
score_9, score_8_up, score_7_up, (HIDDENTAG:1.5), female, upper body, clothed, facing viewer
score_9, score_8_up, score_7_up, (HIDDENTAG:1.5), male, upper body, clothed, facing viewer
score_9, score_8_up, score_7_up, (HIDDENTAG:1.5), Jinx, upper body, facing viewer
score_9, score_8_up, score_7_up, (HIDDENTAG:1.5), Sephiroth, upper body, facing viewer
Negative Prompt: simple background, monochrome, watermark
Model: autismmixSDXL (Confetti version)
Seed: 370518757346956
Steps: 25
cfg: 6
Sampler: Euler
Scheduler: Karras
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The reason I chose Jinx and Sephiroth are due to their respective name prompts being unique and that they had strong adherence to prompts. You can see in the image that it's relatively the same scene. Characters like Goku for instance, completely changed the scene and resisted the style changes more. I'll need to tool around with this more once I start trying to make a Lora, as I'd prefer to properly tag pictures so that they can adhere strongly to the prompt while keeping their identity. Jinx is really good in this respect.
12/8/24 Update
Added a throughput to test what source the tag is from (source_cartoon, source_anime, source_pony, source_furry). Essentially, by seeing which of these 4 changes the most, you can identify which of these it most likely comes from. In the posts, I'm going to start changing it from unknown artist/style it to unknown <source here> if there is a strong outlier. Here is the baseline I'm using for this reference:
I'll go back through my prior posts and update them appropriately.
11/24/24 Update
Changed multiple items to make it more readable and usable. Config changed to more standard Euler with a lower cfg. Added "clothed" tag to all prompts as they adhered closer to style and I'd like all images to be readable for all audiences. If there is nipples, even if male, I did a censor pass and it will be marked as "Censored Tag:" on the overlay. Images changed to include overlay of tag and the difference between strength 1 and 1.3. This change identified marked tags that aren't actually hidden tags, as when the strength increased they reverted back closer to baseline instead of becoming more stylized. These images will not be included in the collection.
Character and Clothing Resource Recommendations
For characters, the best one I found is https://ponychar.com/ created by toidicodedao on Reddit. Link to Reddit post here. There is a Civit article that links to the same webpage, but the user names don't match so I'm unclear if that's actually the same person/author, therefore I did not link the article here.
For clothing tags, I recommend https://civitai.com/articles/6349/280-pony-diffusion-xl-recognized-clothing-list-booru-tags-sfw.
Sources for the tags used:
https://civitai.com/articles/6555/pony-xl-tips-and-tricks-recognized-characters-clothing-styles-and-more This one got me started down the rabbit hole.
https://www.reddit.com/r/StableDiffusion/comments/1d43lv6/finding_hidden_stylesconcepts_in_pony_it_can_be/ This reddit post led to:
https://www.reddit.com/r/StableDiffusion/comments/1e7ra98/help_with_pony_diffusion_hidden_tags_and_extention/ This reddit post led to:
https://lite.framacalc.org/4ttgzvd0rx-a6jf (best compilation and my main resource)
https://civitai.com/articles/4644/hidden-characters-and-styles-locked-inside-the-pony-diffusion-v6-model-deprectated I found this post after I started working on this, but I think we are focused on 2 different things. That said, there will be some overlap.
First article on this site, so any feedback is welcome. Thanks.