Simile = comparison, likeness, parallel, similar, resembling
Pony = A small horse
Illustrious = well-known, respected
Note: Preview images are generated without the use of LORAs
---Illustrious ver.---
About
Personally I still prefer the default style of the Pony version but the prompt adherence and style flexibility of the Illustrious XL is just too good to pass up. Prompting and tagging is also a lot easier than the pony version from what I've tested. I tried to replicate the look of the Pony version but there's just too much artist styles for me to do anything without messing with the overall quality, oh well..
Tips for artist styles / characters
Illustrious is a fine-tuned model trained on Danbooru datasets, so there are a lot of data on various artist's styles and characters. So you can prompt a specific style or characters without the need of loras as long as they have substantial amount of dataset on Danbooru and are not too recent. See sample images for examples on how to prompt styles..
My Settings
Sampling Method: Euler a, DPM++ 2M / DPM++ 3M SDE Sampling Steps: 25+ Upscaler: 4x_NMKD-Siax_200k / Remacri CFG Scale: 3 - 6 Clip Skip: 2
Positive Prompt:
masterpiece, best quality, absurdres, newest, perfect quality, best quality, absolutely eye-catching, detailed background, intricate details
Negative Prompt:
lowres, worst quality, bad quality, bad anatomy, sketch, jpeg artifacts, signature, watermark, artist name, old
---Pony ver.---
About
Just like with my HomoSimile model, I'm trying to get that specific look that's between 'anime' and 'western art'. I went a bit easy with the LORAs to ensure better compatibility with other styles. So if you want to use a specific artist's styles it wont diminish the results.
My Settings
Sampling Method: DPM++ 2M / DPM++ 3M SDE Sampling Steps: 25+ Upscaler: 4x_NMKD-Siax_200k / Remacri CFG Scale: 4 - 6 Clip Skip: 2
Positive Prompt:
Not really necessary but it helps increase the quality a little.
score_9, score_8_up, score_7_up, highly detailed, intricate details, detailed background
Negative Prompt:
score_6, score_5, score_4, score_3, score_2, score_1, low quality, deformed, bad hands, watermark