Checkpoints nad loras
Why some of checkpoints are avaible only as Loras? How to use such one as a checkpoint or fuse it witch checkpoint? Why am i asking? I've seen few very good character implementation, but they use chceckpoints which when i download i got safetesnor file, which i cannot use as model. When i use cof example coal mix model chckpoint, i need to use lora, but then character do not get generated as desired. Best result i see in other users images, when they use 1 model and 1 character lora.
2 Answers
They're two entirely different things - but I can see why it's confusing. Both LoRA and "base" models can be .safetensors format.
You can (and should) absolutely use .safetensors format files as your base model. If you filter Civitai by model, you'll see lots of great base models to use. These get placed in the stable-diffusion-webui\models\Stable-diffusion directory.
LoRA files can also be .safetensors format, and they get placed in the stable-diffusion-webui\models\Lora folder.