The amazing Animagine XL 4.0 knows many characters, poses, camera angles, expressions and emotions. I found the version "4.0" not "Opt" or "Zero" to be quite artistic and magical compared to other models in lighting and composition.

This derivative model tries to preserve the original, but makes the "photorealistic" tag work a little better. If photorealistic are omitted, it defaults to anime. It is not perfect photorealism, but it can definitely do 2.5D and semi-real, with occasional generations looking very photoreal indeed.

v5: steps: 25 cfg: 3.0 sampler: euler (reduces noise!) scheduler: auto/normal.
v4: steps: 25 cfg: 4.0 sampler: euler_a (increases detail!) scheduler: auto/normal.
v3: steps: 20 cfg: 2.0 sampler: dpmpp_2m scheduler: beta (reduces noise!)

size: 1024 x 1408 (1536 often creates long body or long limbs)

negative: lowres, error, cropped, worst quality, low quality, low score, bad score, average score, (blurry, nsfw, explicit, nude)

realism trigger words: sunlight, shadow, photorealistic. Be careful, do not increase strength in ComfyUI too much with a short prompt, for example (photorealistic:1.5) will destroy the quality.

Version 5 has much fixed lighting. For dark images, lower cfg and use the "dramatic lighting" lora. These keywords help a little: (chiaroscuro, darkness, dark room, shadows, dusk, night:1.2)

Workflow: I have uploaded a zip of the showcase images in PNG format for you to drag in ComfyUI workflows. It's called "Training Data" as that was the only option.

Animagine recommends better character prompt following by not to starting the prompt with "masterpiece, high score, great score, absurdres realistic, photorealistic" and instead putting it at the end.

original prompting guide: https://cagliostrolab.net/posts/optimizing-animagine-xl-40-in-depth-guideline-and-update

Version History

v1 - quite authentic, quite realistic, but quite noisy except with specific samplers. Not recommended.

v2 - improved photorealism but further from the Anim4gine base model. Not really recommended.

v3 - I focused on improving the prompt following from the base model, face expressions and good photo-reality. Works with wider range of samplers, steps and cfg. Recommended.

v4 - An improvement in anatomy, realism, highlights and shadows. It also follows closely to Animagine XL 4.0. Use "safe" in the positive and (nsfw, explicit) in the negative.

v5 - Improved prompt following, restoring the default style to anime, photorealism requires the trigger word.

License

This model adopts the original CreativeML Open RAIL++-M License from Stability AI without any modifications or additional restrictions. The license terms remain exactly as specified in the original SDXL license, which includes:

✅ Permitted: Commercial use, modifications, distributions, private use
❌ Prohibited: Illegal activities, harmful content generation, discrimination, exploitation
⚠️ Requirements: Include license copy, state changes, preserve notices
📝 Warranty: Provided "AS IS" without warranties

Please refer to the original SDXL license for the complete and authoritative terms and conditions.