DarkNet (Pony XL)

DarkNet is a custom SDXL Pony checkpoint merge engineered specifically for high-contrast, atmospheric, and moody realism. By fusing a powerhouse engine with a deep-contrast, dark-tonal model, DarkNet breaks away from the typical over-saturated or overly clean "AI look."

THIS HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH THE DEEPWEB OR TOR DARKNETS!

The name reflects the model's design: a perfect blend of cybernetic detail and rich, shadowy depth that introduces moody, dramatic lighting into every image.

It excels at pulling subjects out of the shadows, delivering striking chiaroscuro lighting, and capturing grit, micro-textures, and cinematic intensity.

What it Does & What It's Good At

• SFW & NSFW Versatility: Built on the robust Pony architecture, DarkNet excels equally at clean, cinematic artistic portraits (SFW) and highly detailed, anatomically correct explicit content (NSFW). The moody lighting adds an elegant, high-end aesthetic to both styles.

• Atmospheric & Cinematic Lighting: The core strength of DarkNet is its handling of light. It naturally introduces deep shadows, rich contrast, and moody, low-key lighting without requiring heavy negative prompting or external contrast LoRAs.

• Grit and Realism: This model retains exceptional skin textures, fabric details, and complex environmental elements like rain-slicked streets, smoke, or metallic surfaces.

• Pony Adherence: It retains the deep concept vocabulary and strong prompt adherence inherent to the Pony architecture, making it highly responsive to complex character actions, styles, and multi-subject scenes.

• Ideal Use Cases: Dark Fantasy, cyberpunk neon-noir, gritty portraits, horror aesthetics, dramatic fashion photography, homemade amateur pornography, and anything requiring a dark, mysterious, or somber tone.

What it Struggles With & What to Avoid

• Bright, Flat, or Cheerful Scenes: DarkNet is structurally biased toward shadow and depth. If you are trying to generate a bright, sun-bleached beach photo, a clean corporate headshot, or cheerful, high-key pastel art, this model will fight you. It will often force shadows or muted tones into scenes meant to be purely vibrant.

• Over-baked Contrast at High CFG: Because the underlying architecture carries strong stylistic weight, pushing your CFG scale above 5.0 can cause the shadows to "crush," over-bake, or become heavily pixelated. Keeping your CFG tightly bounded ensures smooth shadow transitions.

🚀 Choose Your Version: Standard vs. DMD2 (Turbo)

Depending on your hardware and workflow speed requirements, two versions of DarkNet are available under the files tab:

1. DarkNet Standard (Maximum Detail Control)

The classic merge built for uncompromised fidelity, deep texture passes, and fine-tuned control over your image style via the CFG scale.

• Sampler: DPM++ 2M SDE (Crucial for rendering heavy textures and micro-details correctly)

• Scheduler: Exponential or Beta57

• Steps: 30 – 35 steps

• CFG Scale / Style Tuning:

  • 3.5 – 4.0: Curates a beautifully grainy, raw, amateur photography look with organic imperfections.

  • 4.0 – 5.0: Achieves a slightly cleaner, sharper, semi-professional photography look.

💡 Creator's Note on Schedulers: While both work beautifully, I personally feel that Beta57 produces marginally better realism, capturing a fraction more fine texture and shadow depth, though it's by a very small margin. Try both to see which matches your specific prompt workflow!

2. DarkNet DMD2 (Ultra-Fast)

A specialized version distilled using the state-of-the-art DMD2 framework. It speeds up generation times by at least 2x (or more depending on your GPU) while maintaining the model’s unique atmospheric style. The quality loss is so minimal that it is barely noticeable to most people.

• Sampler: LCM

• Scheduler: Exponential

• Steps: 8 steps (Using 12 steps can add even more depth and detail)

• CFG Scale: Strictly 1.0 (No negative prompt is required for this model)

🛠️ Recommended Node Integration

Both the Standard and DMD2 versions of DarkNet work flawlessly with my "Cyber Realistic Pony Prompt Generator (ComfyUI Custom Node)", available directly on my CivitAI profile and my GitHub account.

If you want to maximize this model's latent realism, structure complex multi-subject scenes cleanly, and effortlessly generate the target aesthetics without fighting text syntax, I highly recommend routing your prompts through that node.

Prompting Guide

DarkNet fully utilizes the standard Pony prompt formatting style. Structure your manual prompts based on your intended output:

SFW Positive Prompt Structure:

score_9, score_8_up, score_7_up, rating_safe, photorealistic, 1girl, [your subject/character details], moody lighting, deep shadows, cinematic film grain, night, [environmental details]

NSFW Positive Prompt Structure:

score_9, score_8_up, score_7_up, rating_explicit, photorealistic, 1girl, uncensored, [explicit/anatomy tags], moody lighting, deep shadows, cinematic film grain, [environmental details]

Negative Prompt Structure (Standard Model Only):

score_4, score_5, score_6, source_anime, source_cartoon, 3d, render, CGI, monochrome, flat lighting, bright, overexposed

Tip: Including source_anime, source_cartoon in the negative prompt helps unleash the full realistic potential of this merge. Remember, the DMD2 version requires a CFG of 1.0, so you can leave the negative prompt completely empty when using it!