🎉 OctopussMixS v3 is here — celebrating 1000 followers! 🐙✨Wow, what a journey 🚀 Hitting 1k followers is genuinely cool and I wanted to drop something special to mark the moment.🎨 What's new in v3?This update was all about softening the brushwork without losing what makes OctopussMixS feel like OctopussMixS. The original had a slightly sharper, more illustrative style — and while I love that look, I wanted v3 to lean a bit more painterly without drifting into pure realism. Think softer transitions, more nuanced shading, but still very much that anime-adjacent semi-realistic vibe you came here for 💕The face quality from v2 experimental carries over (Celestreal injection still doing its magic), so you keep all the cinematic face rendering and skin response to dramatic lighting that v2 introduced.🌟 What stayed the same?<ul><li>Body composition, color palette and overall style identity 💪</li><li>Prompt handling and versatility improved 🔥</li><li>The same generation settings work (DPM++ 2M Karras, 40 steps, CFG 7, Clip Skip 2)</li></ul>🙏 Thank you all so muchEvery follower, every download, every comment — it genuinely keeps me motivated to keep experimenting and refining. This community is the best 💖Hope you enjoy v3! Drop your generations in the comments, I love seeing what you all create 🎨 _____________________________________________________________________________ 🔄 OctopussMixS — Updated! Meet the S2 Experimental BuildSince releasing the original merge I've been deep in the lab running controlled tests, and I'm excited to share what I landed on.The original OctopussMixS had a strong foundation — the body rendering, skin sheen, colors and overall style were exactly what I wanted. But the face always felt slightly too stylized for my taste. So this update was purely about upgrading the face quality while keeping everything else untouched.What changed?This build adds two new models into the surgical blend on top of the OctopussMixS base.Celestreal Anime Semi v3.0 comes in as the face donor. It brings a more cinematic, characterful face quality — sharper features, better eye depth, and skin that responds beautifully to complex lighting like candlelight and shadows. It was injected specifically into the face and upper body blocks, leaving everything else untouched.Hyphoria was added purely for prompt adherence — it only touches the CLIP/text encoder blocks, meaning it has zero influence on the visual output. It just makes the model listen better to your prompts.I also added OUT01 into the blend on the advice of experienced checkpoint makers in the community. This block handles the upper body and shoulder area — including it made the face and neck sit more naturally on the body.Everything else — body composition, skin tone, colors, NSFW rendering, overall style — remains pure original OctopussMixS. Nothing was touched that was already working.The vibe is still the same, just a little more refined.Credits: Big thanks to the creators of Celestreal Anime Semi and Hyphoria. And continued gratitude to @Crody for the merge guide that started all of this 🙏 __________________________________________________________________________ 🎉 My First Illustrious Checkpoint Merge — and I'm Genuinely Excited About It!After diving deep into Crody's Model Merge Guide v2.0, I've finally released my first proper checkpoint merge for Illustrious — and honestly? I'm really happy with how it turned out. What went into this?This model is a blend of three carefully chosen checkpoints:<ul><li>IlustMix v7 — bringing in the color pop and that gorgeous skin and face rendering</li><li>Wai v16 — for that clean, polished anime-adjacent foundation</li><li>Unholy Desire — adding edge, stylization, and a little drama</li></ul>On top of that, I baked in two style LoRAs to push the aesthetic in a more distinctive direction, plus ADetailer to keep faces consistent and detailed out of the box. The vibe?Semi-realistic, stylized, and a little flashy. Think high-render anime meets modern digital illustration — detailed skin, strong lighting, bold style. It handles characters really well and loves a dramatic pose. First results are attached — generated straight from the merge with minimal prompting. Would love to hear what you think! Credits: Big thanks to the creators of IlustMix, Wai, and Unholy Desire — this wouldn't exist without their work. And shoutout to @<a target="_blank" rel="ugc" href="https://civarchive.com/user/Crody">Crody</a> (<a target="_blank" rel="ugc" href="https://civarchive.com/articles/22739/crodys-model-merge-guide-v20-team-c">https://civarchive.com/articles/22739/crodys-model-merge-guide-v20-team-c</a>) for the merge guide that made this actually make sense. And also @vovkka who pointed me to crodys guide🙏

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