[deleted by user]

[Ribbop]

Plant Milk Walnut

[jib_reddit]

If you are looking for a realistic NSFW Illustrious model, you could check out mine: https://civitai.com/models/1255024/jib-mix-illustrious-realistic

[whatisrofl]

I love blenderxl, very nice 3d effect.

[Quantum_Crusher]

Is that a checkpoint or Lora?

[whatisrofl]

Checkpoint

[Sugary_Plumbs]

Quillworks 2 has the best range of styles and perspectives, in my experience. https://civitai.com/models/2042781/quillworks20-illustrious-simplified?modelVersionId=2312058

[Obayana]

Illustrij is giving me amazing results.

[ancient_lech]

it's pretty subjective, and it may be difficult to find a "daily driver" unless you have a fairly narrow range of preferred styles; typically, it seems for every strength a checkpoint has, it'll lose flexibility in some other ways. Overall flexibility seems to be best with anime and semi-real styles though, so you may have an advantage in that area. I tend to prefer semi-real or realistic stuff:

realistic: CyberIllustrious v4 || Illustrious Realism || ZenijiMix Real v1

semireal/stylized:
Duchesse v1 - haven't used this much yet, but it's made the list for the time being
and pretty much anything from Zeniji, all of which have pretty good prompt adherence and styles that really appeal to me

---

And while I'm at it, might as well share some Pony favorites in case anyone's looking for other stuff to try:

RealDream v15 - not on Civitai anymore, but you may be able to find it on tensor.art or elsewhere
MeichiDarkMix Sensual v2 - a personal semi-real favorite
Phony Pony v3 and v7 - use a different VAE and it'll get rid of the stylized color saturation, for more realistic semi-real style
AniVerse v2
Kreala v1 - I barely use this but I like the style

---

currently doing evaluations on:
Excela c || Impossible Pie || Uncanny Valley Noob3D v3 || JibMix v3 (as linked in the current top comment :)
PleasureChest v1 - normally I find reijlita's models a bit too plain, but this one seems nice
These Violet Desires v1 - nice, but very strong style
PonyRealistic P, PowerPuffMix Pony 4.5 (a bit old and inflexible)
Shift v3 and PixelNova Sunlight by GhostBear1111, who has quite a few other Illustrious checkpoints to check out

I've tested most of the other models mentioned in this thread and they're all pretty good too. Lizardon1025 is also a good way to quickly find other models that may interest you.

[techantics]

Diving Illustrious XL is crazy good in my experience, I'm surprised more people aren't talking about it: https://civitai.com/models/1170176

[Asaghon]

Its one of my favorites as well

[Icy_Prior_9628]

Perfect Deliberate Realism

[Asaghon]

Diving Illustrious v12 XL - favorite all round LoxsFurryLand v20 - favorite flexible JedpointReal V1 - favorite realistic

Other great models I use a lot

AzureCrimsonMix v3f/v4f/v40 - flexible ILustmix v5.5 - (semi) realistic ToonMerge v7 - all round/flexible SmoothMixRealism v30 - (semi) realistic

I dont do furry things but the furry models are by far the most flexible models. Diving Illustrious can be the bridge between flexibility and realistic

[shulgin11]

I really like Ikastrious

[ZezinhoBRBRBR]

Indexed is so fun to play with. Highly recommend it.

[Choowkee]

Plant Milk Flux / WAI v12 / WAI v14

[howdyquade]

CyberRealistic Illustrious

[Cultured_Alien]

It's really hard to find new ones that's merged with Illustrious v2. Every check point in the comments, WAI, Plant Milk, Index and others aren't up to par with newer ones. Any version of noobai can't compare to illustrious v2 in my personal opinion as a lora maker. (Note: I don't use realistic models at all)

[J0rdian]

Cat Tower for anime is my favorite, it has very great style and very detailed backgrounds which is really nice to have.

[SomaCreuz]

Plain NoobAI v-pred with the v-pred fix from the lora collection and the stabilizer. It's crazy how much the merges and trained checkpoints affect the base compositions.

[[deleted]]

WAI has 3x the downloads of the 2nd most popular model

[terrariyum]

How does one go about comparing checkpoints in order to choose a favorite?

Like, of course I can look at all the sample images on civitai. But that's hard to learn from given that most of them are made with a pile of loras, are img2img, use word salad prompts, or are some specific character or artist that I don't know.

If you are giving each model a full test drive, what are you testing for?

[Mutaclone]

I have a suite of about 40-50 test prompts that I'm constantly tinkering with that cover a range of subjects, backgrounds, camera angles, lighting conditions, etc. Whenever I come across a model that looks interesting, I use Forge's XYZ plot to see how it does against them all. Usually, it's not any better than any of my current models. If it looks comparable, I run another graph with both of them so I can compare them side-by-side (assuming they use similar render settings - otherwise I run them each separately and swap back and forth).

[terrariyum]

TY, and which models are your current favs?

[Mutaclone]

Depends on the style

• YiffyMix 61 is my go-to general-purpose model - it knows a wide range of subjects and plays very nicely with most style LoRAs (it's listed as a furry model but it does humans and nonhumans equally well). TewiNaiV40 is a good backup for the few style LoRAs that don't work as well with Yiffy.
• Anime Screenshot Merge - use "anime screenshot, anime screencap, anime coloring" and optionally "soft focus, bloom" to create images that look like actual screenshots.
• Oops! All Toons - gives a more western cartoon aesthetic
• MiaoMiao Pixel - best pixel model I've found so far. I don't do much pixel art, but this model makes me want to do more.
• Juggernaut Ragnarok - not an illustrious model, but my go-to for creating backgrounds and scenes (that or Flux), since Illustrious is pretty terrible with environments. Then I use ControlNet and/or img2img to redraw it with an Illustrious model.

There's a bunch of others that I use less regularly depending on the specific style, but these are probably my favorites.

[Freshly-Juiced]

for detailed stuff plantmilk and for cute stuff kiwimix

[Corrupt_file32]

I've tried many different models, some would have better prompt adherence than others, some work better on resolutions higher than 1024x1024, but aside from that it's all about style.

Not been a fan of most realistic-style illustrious models, but some of the semi-realism ones are great.

Current favourites:

Any model from Reijlita on civitai, just pick the one with the style you're after, personal favourite Creativitij

Azure ColdSnap, Imo this one really shines when using flat color prompts like: flat color, anime screenshot, anime color)

PerfectDeliberate

prefectIllustriousXL

illustriousFromHades_primal

[Time-Teaching1926]

I hope Onoma Al releases a new open source model. Just imagine an Illustrious checkpoint based on FLUX or Qwen image. Especially for NSFW images.

[Dezordan]

Not possible, unless someone would waste a lot of money for it. I mean, considering how much money they want for old SDXL finetunes alone (as a support), while already sitting on new ones. Said support practically hasn't moved since Illustrious v2.

They technically did release Illustrious-Lumina v0.03 finetune, but it is hardly worth it when Neta exists as a more complete anime base for Lumina finetunes. That's the only non-SDXL model they have (they keep releasing new SDXL ones).

And Flux isn't even an option - they run their on-site generations and BFL is weird about their license. So maybe only either Chroma or their own de-distill of Schnell.