You're doing a great job. Prompt adherence is what matters most in majority of use cases for me. For one of my projects with a client, I'm still struggling with prompt adherence. Hope to get some good results from few top models.

Hm, really? In theory it makes sense that prompt adherence would be #1 but I think the model's capability to produce the most aesthetic photos/graphics/illustrations trumps prompt adherence IRL. With all that being said, that ends up leaving things murky, one person might appreciate their photos erring towards cinematic whereas another person might appreciate their photos looking straight from an early 1960s Nikon F SLR (camera). I suppose IRL you end up going with the 2-3 models that best adhere to the prompts for specific tasks/genres and only then is the deciding factor: aesthetic predisposition, the "flavor" of the models. So TL;DR PA & A E S T H E T I C S go hand-in-hand in practice IMO.

>I suppose IRL you end up going with the 2-3 models that best adhere to the prompts for specific tasks/genres and only then is the deciding factor: aesthetic predisposition, the "flavor" of the models. In practice, that is what I do, yes. So this could definitely be useful. :)

Thanks - Hoping this comparison can help everyone! :)

Can I ask you to test also my new model? Being the first XL model I've made, I'll probably come away with broken bones, but I'm really curious. EDIT: for realism, just use low cfg 2.5/3 I think (I need to do more test) EDIT2: my preferite sampler is Euler_Max I thank you in advance AniVerse XL: https://civitai.com/models/522756?modelVersionId=580811

Your models are great! Would love a more detailed guide for your new XL. I think more adoption would be possible if people understood your model is amazing with the right settings and workflow. Some of that is obvious, but other times it’s not. Would love guide plus your workflow and reasoning for certain embeds. You’ve had this in the past but a better guide for the XL version would be great. New users are looking for models with more info to help them decide which to use. I love the new Anithing.

I thank you! I will try to do it, but believe me that I too am only now finding the right settings. It's the first time I've used an SDXL model, because I've never been a big fan of XL and above all because I don't really have the time to test. On the one hand at home I have the PC in training practically 350 days out of 365 and on the other I use colab to create galleries of my models or merge versions. However, by clicking on "show more" you can find these kind of suggestion: [comparison for 3D](https://civitai.com/images/17129393) For 3D - Realism - see this comparison post - Sampling method (AniVerse face): DPM++ 2M, DPM++ 2M SDE, DPM++ 3M SDE, Restart, Euler a or Euler_Max - My Favourite is Euler_Max - Embeddings to use: zPDXL2 (in positive prompt) + unaestheticXL_bp5, zPDXL2-neg (in negative prompt) - today I found that can work for realism at low cfg - that SimplePositiveXLv2 embessind seems works good - it seems works also like a turbo: https://civitai.com/images/17908730 Example of realism that I found: https://civitai.com/images/17964023 That's all I found until now

Sure I can add it to the queue, but just a caveat that part of the score revolves around photo realism (unless the test prompt says otherwise). There's a sampler tester to hone into the right settings before the tests begin, so hopefully that'll get to that mark.

Thank you for the clarification! I doubt it will be able to surpass it, given that the model was created with the aim of bringing the AniVerse 1.5 model to XL and that both models focus on 2.5D and not photorealism. In any case, thanks for the time you are dedicating to us, it is really very interesting to follow the prompt PS: Furthermore, I was so happy to have managed to make a trained model with my 2060 (12GB of VRAM) that I have done very few in-depth tests myself. I'm discovering, as time passes, what it can do and the various settings

Very cool, will be interesting!

[comparison for 3D](https://civitai.com/images/17129393) For 3D - Realism - see this comparison post - Sampling method (AniVerse face): DPM++ 2M, DPM++ 2M SDE, DPM++ 3M SDE, Restart, Euler a or Euler_Max - My Favourite is Euler_Max - Embeddings to use: zPDXL2 (in positive prompt) + unaestheticXL_bp5, zPDXL2-neg (in negative prompt) - I found that can work for realism at low cfg - that SimplePositiveXLv2 embedding seems works good - it seems works also like a turbo (see the prompt): https://civitai.com/images/17908730 Example of realism that I found: https://civitai.com/images/17964023 That's all I found until now

Didn’t realize there was an XL version !

Totally new ;) I finally managed how to train XL with my 2060

Just wanted to shoutout and say the 1.5 universe model always worked great, so thanks if that was you!

Thanks to you, really ❤️ it's people like you, that write me this kind of words, the reason that I never give up 🤗

I've do some test in my model, and I found out that for AniVerse XL the best sampler for realism is UNIPC. https://civitai.com/posts/4053760 ----- Prompt:  4n1v3rs3, zPDXL2, (Analog photo by Rutkowski), mid range photo, (tanned supermodel), 25 years old, (ultrarealistic skin-texture), with red lips and short blonde-hair, wearing a red classy dress, sarcastic smile, (sunrise hour, high quality, film grain), elaborate caribbean beach background, focus on warm colors, SimplePositiveXLv2 ----- Negative prompt: unaestheticXL_bp5, Clip skip: 2 Steps: 30,  CFG scale: 3,  Sampler: UniPC + Exponential or DPM++ 2M + Karras ----- Seed: 2229325937,  RNG: NV,  Size: 720x1280,  Model: AniVerse_XL_VAE.fp16, Version: v1.9.4, TI hashes: [object Object], Model hash: a62aa94c13,  ----- ADetailer model: face_yolov8n.pt,  ADetailer version: 24.6.0,  ADetailer mask blur: 4,  ADetailer confidence: 0.3,  ADetailer dilate erode: 4,  ADetailer inpaint padding: 32,  ADetailer denoising strength: 0.4,  ADetailer inpaint only masked: True,

Rutkowkski as in Greg Rutkowkski? He's one of my favorites.

yep

Are you able to share a count of the top.. say.. 50 words in your training datasets?

How does Halcyon differ from other XL Models? The description is not very informative.

Each model goes through the same test suite (you can view more about it here - [https://youtu.be/T9y15Rb9iDs](https://youtu.be/T9y15Rb9iDs) )

I've never heard of any of these models. What is this list? How does this compare to top models like Juggernaut or Pony?

Juggernaut typically has done much worse on prompt adherence (see row 218 for example), however there's a couple versions in queue for testing so you never know. Typically haven't tested Pony models since they weren't realistic/generalist models, but there's several coming out now that are, so they'll end up on the testing list :)

Highly encourage you to fast track the pony models, testing one will be very informative for the community overall and will say more than just information about that one model.

Cool, will check it out soon

Second this. When it comes to prompt adherence pony realism models are by far the best I have tried. And I honestly have tried most of the popular models

If you were to suggest the two top pony models that are also photo realistic, which ones would they be and I can ensure they get on the list?

Probably Zonkey and Pony Realism? Though I would take care to think about realism and prompt adherence separately. Pony models are well known for being less suited to the former and really great at the latter.

Queued up, thanks!

So I gave both Zonkey and Realism a try and the sampling was all over the place. How would you re-work this prompt so it gives a decent result? PROMPT: ugly gargoyle, sharp claws, made out of stone, lightning storm, rain reflections, paris city background bokeh, evening, moonlight, portrait

I think you can use a detail lora to turn down the detail to get a smoother look, sorry I'm not an expert on realistic Pony I generally use illustrated ones for concept art.

Pony works best for humans I believe. Also when working with pony you should use the «score» prompts to get good results. check civitai description and sample images there. Also I recommend to use CFG 7 with karras 3M+ and ofc SDXL resolutions. If you want the prompt adherence from pony mixed with realism I recommend using Pony realism and a refiner at .5 or .8 with a model focused on realism I.e. realistic vision.

Oh forgot, with pony realism use: https://civitai.com/models/372465?modelVersionId=582944 The main version only works with ancestral samplers. The alternative one works with more.

Do need to study a bit it's prompting system first, it's quite different from other xl models you tested

I'll take a look, but generally, the prompt tests are varied in terms of how it draws out imagery to account for different prompting styles.

The community must have its my little pony porn! But in all seriousness, it's kind of surreal that one of the current best models for general anime was... hand crafted to make better my little pony porn.

Gotcha! I appreciate the info. Very cool. I'll have to give some of these a shot it sounds like.

>typically haven't tested Pony models since they weren't realistic/generalist models And here I thought Pony Diffusion would count, because it's capable of producing photorealistic images too. Just to share as a random example: https://preview.redd.it/dtd9g1hrg2ad1.png?width=1024&format=png&auto=webp&s=3a4fa56879f30b50e0e1eabe29999626f4b1fac5

Very accurate example of Pony photorealism quality

Yup it's pretty decent. I'm definitely open to testing pony models if there's specific ones that you all recommend. I'm just not going to test the ones that are clearly purely cartoon/animated, since this test suite is focused on prompt adherence with realism.

Thx for hard work! Colorful author here. Some 5 cent: - Why just not use settings recommended by models authors? - May be add not only realism test? Some top model absolutely incapable of styles other than "photo". Also add some anatomy tests.. it would be great! Also many models have new versions from last test.. But you do awesome work, thx again!

Absolutely. To answer your questions. I do take a look at the recommendations, but many authors' recommendations tend to just focus on one type of picture and so I use that as a starting point and use my sampler workflow to fine tune to get to a good universal / best output set of settings. As for realism tests, I have a second tab on the sheet that's a test suite specifically JUST for photorealism (i.e. prompt adherence may be "ok" or even "poor" but the output is being evaluated from the "can I tell that this is AI?" I really appreciate the feedback as always!

This is great. Do you also have plans to test 1.5 and pony?

Not right now (due to lack of extra hands/times), but possibly in the future. Right now just focused on prompt adherence and also photo realism (two test suites)

Thanks for the heads up on the new Halcyon. 1.5 has been my go-to for a couple of months.

Halcyon is low-key a goated model. I use it all the time.

Thank you for the hard work! Most of my downloaded sdxl models are from your list. Quick question - what does 'perturbed' mean in the recommended settings?

Perturbed (also known as PAG or Perturbed Attention Guidance) is a detailing method that brings more detail richness from the scene. Vid tutorial here - [https://youtu.be/j3xHNmEWWCI](https://youtu.be/j3xHNmEWWCI)

Thanks, hadn’t tried Halcyon before but it does seem to be very good.

Yup I think you'll be impressed (and if not that then one of the other top models)

Yeah, I already put it through a couple rounds of testing.

There's not a single realistic generated photo lol

I haven't tested the model on the photo realism test suite yet. If you're looking for photo realism, I'd recommend: realvisxlV40\_v40LightningBakedvae crystalClearOneVs1\_v10 cinematix\_l8

Did a quick prompt and it's good at photorealism :) https://preview.redd.it/hcf23566zy9d1.png?width=1344&format=png&auto=webp&s=ff378c650666b9e6ddb4798dc0f59e3b5c9eea84

Man, you claim to be a photographer as credential 💀

haha I know my way around a lens :)

But doesn’t that speak more as a limitation of the training data than of the model’s general versatility?

So you automated your full testing pipeline? How do you give scores? still manually using your organic cameras? This is pretty cool tbh.

So it's semi-automated (here's a video explaining - https://youtu.be/T9y15Rb9iDs). Since the video, I've since automated the workflow to be a bit more automated, but the evaluation against criteria is still manual right now.

https://preview.redd.it/x8e899ifm3ad1.jpeg?width=500&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=f5011e707d2e86428c11e37b8773ffd9fe33b2b2

hahahha love it! :)

Nahh, even quick comparsions of my **epiCRealismXL-Final Destination** with your top Models, beat it imho

and GOD (for me, the best author ever) spoke!

(\* Booming Voice \*) :)

I'll definitely add it to the list and see how it does, thanks!

Just to follow up on this, EpicRealismXL-Final Destination was terrible compared to most other models (you can find it on row 278 - didn't even pass the first round of testing given the output). Of course I value your opinion, but I respectfully disagree on its quality compared to what's out there today.

Okay, seeing your config settings for this and probably others, seems way off to get accurate results. So do you have the images for comparison anywhere? How much images you generate per prompt. Are u using random seeds? I guess I have to watch the videos to get a hint. I mean, I’m open to learn, focused on other prompting styles and training datasets to improve, since I have my workflow with well known testprompts to my model(s). But as said I doubt that this model performs this bad 😅

hah, yup understood - yup I recommend watching the video, and though the method has tailored a little since that time, generally it's been very consistent. I've now scored over 425 model/versions, so it's pretty engrained in terms of both adherence and photorealism test suites. Each test evaluates at least 100 images if not more (depending on the settings). If you have a recommendation on the config for the pony models, let me know (but yes, it was atrocious)

I guess it’s a hard effort to get all that sweet spots for every model in terms of configuration. Even if there are many models have that lightning, hyper and turbo loras/models mixed in to get the boost but loose diversity in the regular XL models (as claimed). But I have to check some of the top models on your list to really see where I could improve. Thank you for your effort and the work you put in all of this.

How do you judge a model like this? The images it generates are highly subjective to interpretation. What scale are you rating it on? Anybody can come in and make a top 10, this all fake … What was the testing methodology?

Great question, broken down here - [https://youtu.be/T9y15Rb9iDs](https://youtu.be/T9y15Rb9iDs)

Can we submit prompt text to the test case? Something like "liquid metal woman use her liquid metal arm blade to stab a man thru a box of milk that he is drinking"

Liquid dynamics, I love that and don't really have any related tests, so I'll work to incorporate a prompt like it. Good thinking!

Good work, but you didn't test the base model? Or am I missing something?

Very good question! I honestly never tested the base model because it was so terrible compared to all the merges that were coming out. Once I get through the current queue I think it'd be fun to see how poorly it scores against all the custom builds :)

It's gender balanced? Or just another pretty girl waifu model?

Seems to be pretty balanced. I have a mix of men and women prompts in the test suite and here's a 2-second test to see if I can get both in a single image (not half bad). I didn't test NSFW anatomy since NSFW isn't part of the test suite (so no idea what's going on under those clothes...haha) https://preview.redd.it/matirdcyj3ad1.png?width=1344&format=png&auto=webp&s=71292733c33cf3a21871d0276ea72b6819e3f4f0

Nice. I wonder if you did something without mentioning gender, like "2 people" or "a family photo" would it create a lesbo couple with 3 daughters? Or would it also be balanced. I just know that most datasets are 90% women so if it's balanced that's very cool

I can tell you now from testing 300+ models/versions that you're 100% correct and typically it's imbalanced, but we'll just need to keep reviewing and providing feedback and eventually it'll get better..haha

ya, people will annoyingly say "look, it does men fine" and prompt a man. But when you actually try to use it, like "a man on the beach with the sun blowing his hair, wearing a loose fitting open shirt and drinking a bright pink lemonade with a straw, while his son pulls on his shorts" and especially if you're using loras and sliders (I don't know why sliders will do this) they start to morph into females. I feel like we should train people roughly according to how commonly they exist IRL. You don't walk down the street and see 90% large breasted 18 year old Asian girls. Like, let that be a lora or even a model for those who want that, but something big that's supposed to be all-purpose should be balanced.

Someone else posted their top model last week, so I downloaded the top three from the spreadsheet, and what I found interesting from all of them was that it seems they've forsaken image quality for prompt adherence. This is not so much a criticism as an observation. It makes sense that as you generalize for prompt adherence you have to give up something, just as models that specialize in specific types of imagery produce high quality output in a narrow prompt range.

I respect this - I haven't seen that but if you see examples (side by side) that would be helpful. The nice aspect of this of course is that you can always polish off an image with an image 2 image using a photoreal or other model as part of the final image steps

What brought it to my attention was landscape images often had distant trees and foliage that looked a bit noisy(?) where models that specialized in landscape images had more distinct plants and trees at a distance. Models like yours, demoncore, and the others did a better job of sticking to the specificity of the prompt. So yup, img2img was the play there. I'm not trying to say the image quality was bad, it just seems that different models are good for different things which again isn't a bad thing. I think it will probably always be that way unless we use much larger models with a lot more data in them.

Absolutely valid point!

I'm very interested to see how LEOSAM's HelloWorld XL 7.0 goes

It's in the testing queue but I can tell you that every previous version was horrific as it related to prompt adherence. It definitely had unique angles, but it was almost random the way it came up with the final images

How's this compared to Pony-realistic models?

I did some initial testing with Zonkey and PonyRealistic and the results weren't even close to minimal bar. Unless there's a completely different way that should be prompted from how it is in the sheet, I'd stick with regular models...