Niji Exploration

Back in December of 2022 and then in April of 2023, Midjourney released their Niji models v4 and v5, respectively. The Niji model specializes in anime and illustrative styles. I never took the time to explore it, so I'm going to hop right into Niji V5.

Here's a view into the 5 styles that we can choose from using the prompt a spear warrior in unusual armor, action shot --seed 286950974 --s 250 --niji 5 in high variation mode with each image's title as the argument for the --style parameter.

default

expressive

cute

scenic

original

Default, Scenic, and Original feel very much like highly-detailed concept or cover art, with Scenic feeling the most action-focused. Cute definitely gives off chibi vibes. Expressive looks pretty close to the art style of a lot of manhwa (Korean comics), with blocks of colors and lots of fluff and layers and relatively less texture.

The docs state that the model is sensitive to the --s stylize parameter. How does stylize affect the output? Here's the same prompt in the scenic style with different levels of stylize.

scenic 50

scenic 100

scenic 250

scenic 750

I don't get a solid feeling for how this parameter affects the output. Perhaps the backgrounds get a little bit more complex and detailed? I find it interesting that the bottom two characters switched places between 50 and 100 and gained something like a bow between 100 and 250.

How do different models compare?

Let's look at the 6 latest models with the same prompt and seed. Each of these have been generated with offroad dirtbikes in the desert --seed 1773537108 --s 100 <model> upscaled 4x if possible, in high variation mode.

V5.2

V5.1

Niji V5, original

Niji V4

There's a significant change in the Niji V4 and Niji V5 models, with V5 being vastly more illustrative. There same improvement is seen in the regular V4 and V5 models. With that, I won't bother exploring Niji V4.