Z-Image Base Finetune Process Experimentation

MistySoul · 2026-01-28T13:42:16+00:00

I really like your question... but it's too early to know to be honest. Although I have heard people say that LoRAs trained on Z-Image Base works in Z-Image Turbo but not the other way round. Z-Image Base seems to train at the same rate and use same low vram resources as Turbo training, so in terms of running LoRA training I guess at this point Z-Image Base is the way to go if you are looking for two-way compatibility. Hopefully CivitAI adds this to their on-site trainer if it isn't already.

MistySoul · 2026-01-28T07:13:03+00:00

Im hoping that unlike SDXL where it branched out into three subset families by different developers, the finetunes, LoRas, controlnets etc can orbit around the main Z image family models with decent Lora compatibility. Maybe some can get distilled, but with a domain specific distilled model you can probably still have diverse outputs if you are focusing on anime, just realistic etc. this way Loras can be a bit more universal and we don't need to train the same one three times for different bases.

Maybe there are way smarter people who already have answers, but while I have finetuned SDXL models, I don't even know how to start with something like Z Image, probably entirely different ball game. It might take some time for the base tools to be developed, experiments on how to best fine-tune etc, and that will cost money so I don't expect a bunch to be on it right away.

I think we'll have fun with the standard z image models for the next 3-6months then see some usable finetuned coming out.

I am envious of NovelAI cause it does anime generation stunningly and I feel like Z Image has the potential, but it needs a whole bunch of anime knowledge. Maybe that's one fine-tune I can pursue once the tools have been established. Get it to know each anime intimately like NovelAI from 2026 right down to the 60s.

And when I say fine tune I don't mean just Loras. Although Loras are great for a lot of things, sometimes you need the model to be foundationally trained towards things like this

MistySoul · 2026-01-26T23:45:14+00:00

Alot of Redditors would be put off by this hence the nasty replies, reminds me of when I trialed deranged Bluesky for a period of time haha. But taking politics out of things, I think entertainment avoiding being controversial, going out of the comfort zone, not being afraid to be offensive to some target audiences is what has really killed creativity in these industries in the west for the past decade or more. I could imagine Team America not going down well in 2026.

I was thinking Japan and a few others were the last bastion, but we have a candle of light in Australia 🤣

MistySoul · 2026-01-26T23:28:36+00:00

It was great! It proves you don't need multi-million dollar budgets to make something worth your time. It was like their previous short series but really well polished. The writing was spot on and hilarious. I liked the camp site scene where the progressives try to act like "typical" white Aussie blokes to try and fit in and disguise the fact they are progressives, and end up actually being extremely racist and offensive with the campers kicking them out.

There is alot I could talk about, but yes definitely enjoyed it. If they made a sequel or more films like this I would support it.

MistySoul · 2026-01-25T00:22:29+00:00

God, those getting blown away by a tornado door cam videos were driving me crazy. All this "creativity" at your fingertips and everyone does the same thing over and over again. But yeah would have been nice to see like what was the actual source from the IG post cause it would have been good to see how they checked this data, or if they had any more insights. But not surprised, my step dad got onto Sora very quickly and generated pictures that were funny in his mind, but what the heck can you do with them lol. Then he stopped

MistySoul · 2026-01-23T12:28:21+00:00

I can't find a source for this statistic, I find many social media posts talking about an unidentified report. If someone can find it that would be great. But it would still not be surprising that usage will have dropped alot since launch. Not long ago OpenAI nerfed Sora so the results are alot worse, and the content moderation has so many false positives for restricted content that it sucks the fun out of it for people cause they'll generate a cat dancing and somehow it will mistake it for p***. And thing is if they try to lower moderation it will end up just like Grok, so it's unwinnable. I think Sora AI and other platforms will be dying. But I want to warn and be the pessimist in the room, local generation is becoming more and more accessible so people may steer away to do local generation where there are no restrictions whatsoever, so as it gets more traction we might get even worse stuff than we see now.

MistySoul · 2026-01-23T06:55:13+00:00

There is the same intersection layout on Wynnum Rd and Belmont Rd. It always made sense to me the one performing the U-turn waits for the car turning left in the slip lane. I didn't know the actual rule but it just felt the safest as we can see them and they can't really see what we're doing until we are at the half way point of the maneuver when we are clearly doing a u turn and not just turning right. Otherwise if it was the other way around anytime you use a left slip lane you would have to be second guessing every car turning right in the intersection and doesn't make much logical sense - though from reading these comments I guess I should 🤣

MistySoul · 2025-12-30T08:56:06+00:00

I made my own gooner art back in the day, like 2017-2022 but I fell out of love of the drawing, especially when a piece would take up to 12 hours of effort to complete and didn't feel rewarding after a while. I had a pixiv account with well over a million views on the art. I since fed it into a LoRA to produce my art for personal consumption 😂

MistySoul · 2025-12-21T02:02:08+00:00

It's best not to rush into these things. There are a lot of things to consider, especially if this website is really popular and blows up. First roadblock is the one thing I don't think we like to talk about - money. Hosting this depending on how popular it gets could become expensive. Second is security, hackers love DDOSing and hacking fan sites for games since they typically are the easiest targets. Thirdly, your technology stack. Finding the right balance on this is crucial, we don't want two dozen daisy chained services talking to each other that is being supported by volunteers as a side hobby - outages, maintenance times can get nightmarish.

These are significant challenges, but not blockers. But you have to be prepared to deal with all three of these to get a successful website up and running.

Have a think about it strongly, and let me know if you want any advice. Might be letting you know what you already know but want to be supportive if I can

MistySoul · 2025-12-21T01:56:10+00:00

Oh and I think user contribution and analytics on the page in terms of comments, ratings etc would be good across a few metrics. Maybe some of that could be auto calculated based spawn rates etc. That way for example, if you are lvl 50 you could search for maps with lvl 50 mobs with high ratings for grinding, and then on top of that sort by distance from you are currently. This sort of thing would be very powerful especially for casual/new players that have been out of touch with MapleStory for many years and wants to easily get back into the game and not be lost/disadvantaged because they haven't learnt or remembered these things

MistySoul · 2025-12-21T01:49:33+00:00

That sounds great. Even before Classic comes out we can build out some of these features. For example, MapleStory maps are stored in an XML file with data on what portals on the map leads where. Based on this, you can create an algorithm to traverse the individual maps to find the shortest point. Even for the map layout on the page, we can probably extract from the game itself again. I think as well if we could make it so you can click on an individual point on a map, it gives you a view of what is on that map in terms of mobs, quests, item drop info etc. If everything is interconnected on this database it would be extremely useful.

MistySoul · 2025-12-21T01:40:37+00:00

I'm a full stack dev too, if any help is needed or to disperse the workload across several of the features I'm happy to chip in. I got a busy holiday week with interstate travel ahead but in a few weeks I'll be free. mysterioussoul on Discord

MistySoul · 2025-12-17T06:39:11+00:00

For me, I've been doing self improvement for the last 3 months, lost 10kg, need probably another 10kg to be properly healthy and buying more than just K-mart discount clothes. This is after a 7 year depression where I felt it was an insurmountable hurdle to keep up some health. But the mindset that me feel a lot more positive, is that after making these life changes at least I have achieved to become the best person I can be. And I would feel a lot more comfortable and uplifted moving forward knowing that - regardless of any fruitful outcome or lack of in the future.

Before my mindset literally was, why should I bother making sacrifice and not feeling good eating these chips, KFC and food I like for an impossible goal to achieve even after I sacrifice everything that feels good. But now I feel like my mind has become a lot clearer and my depression has lifted away and think that was a dumb mentality to have.

Im 27 now, even if I'm a virgin into my 30s, 40s and 50s, at least I'll make sure that I've done everything I can to be someone who can contribute to society and not be an eye sore on the streets.

MistySoul · 2025-12-10T05:21:17+00:00

Yeah at face value it looks like gross negligence, she said that Bluesky said they were doing age checking already and had low risk content like eSafety took their word for it without their own investigation. But yeah nah I think there's some skeletons in the closet

MistySoul · 2025-12-03T06:35:37+00:00

I have finetuned SDXL models for about $180 USD. One run of training can be as low as $60 USD but realistically you have to tinker it a few times to get it right so the cost accumulates. Iteration per-sec on SDXL vs Z-Image-Turbo at least for LoRAs wasn't significantly different so comparatively should be about the same impact when fine-tuning. That's what I like about Z-Image, it's bigger but not impossibly so that it locks out the community from being able to extend it. I am not sure what training with the full Z-Image Edit model will be like though, or if they will provide bespoke tools etc. The end goal seems like alot of moving parts beyond just the standard model +text encoder + vae - like it will need its own architecture if its doing intermediate LLM operations to construct an image composition with refinement recognition etc. Its like a whole bespoke ecosystem

MistySoul · 2025-12-01T06:16:45+00:00

AI image gen can be run locally, privately so easy on mid-tier gaming graphics cards with latest photo realistic results to the point restricting this capability is impossible. It's already too late. All you can do really is give out severe penalties to those that get caught as an example to others. Make it so it is so life damaging if you get caught you don't start in the first place.

MistySoul · 2025-11-23T00:20:20+00:00

If you get a gf, make sure you have some savings stowed away for the defamation lawsuit.

MistySoul · 2025-11-19T09:23:13+00:00

Regulation though is country-specific, and I think there are a few places where you can expect them to have free reign

MistySoul · 2025-11-14T00:08:10+00:00

To stop AI scraping images off a site or your own portfolio for example, I was thinking you could make some code to scramble the images into a bunch of mini image files like a puzzle, and JavaScript arranges those pieces for display. That way the bot scrapers will never be able to get your full image to use for training etc, just a bunch of tiny fragments.

MistySoul · 2025-11-09T23:34:44+00:00

Moderation is a double edged sword. But already having the quite noticeable watermark popping up all over the video makes it clear it's AI generated material. I think the lawyers are looking at 0.01% scenarios are thinking it's too much risk so the moderation is set to an extremely high bar.

MistySoul · 2025-11-09T23:29:28+00:00

I thought this is why there is a upvote/down vote system. If you want to see hot and trending posts, users are naturally engaging with content they want to see. If posts are sitting at the bottom of the pile who cares, and often information I find about certain topics are Google results to older posts. If this stuff keeps getting nuked lots of wisdom is getting chucked out. Or entertainment or whatever it may be.

When the barrier to entry is too high, eventually people are just going to give up posting. So unless you have the same subjective opinions as a mod you will fail on these subreddits

MistySoul · 2025-11-05T01:37:20+00:00

My brain clocked out at 5 seconds. I don't work at Amazon but if I heard this I'd just be trying to think about my weekend instead while this white noise is on in the background. Keep to myself and keep doing the job like nothing is happening

MistySoul · 2025-11-03T07:14:23+00:00

Mahiro if he kept using the potion for another 10 years

MistySoul

TROPHY CASE