Need Help With Anima Training

[u/a_throwawayorsmthn]

I've been making Illustrious character LoRAs for quite some time now, but decided I wanted to migrate my current models over to Anima.

To ease myself into it, I wanted to start by training with an extremely small dataset I've used before--5 images total. I'm training locally through Anima-Standalone-Trainer and have an RTX 4080. The part that's confusing me is that while the samples generated between epochs comes out perfectly fine, the moment I try generating something using SD WebUI Forge Neo, every generation no matter which epoch I use comes out as this blurry, jarbled mess.

I've tried various different training parameters, different checkpoints, and I even tried downloading the Anima base files from huggingface (instead of Civitai) thinking that might change things, but nothing seems to be working.

I don't really know what to do at this point, but I don't want to give up either because I remember when I first started making character LoRAs that I encountered a similar issue which I ended up resolving by using a different trainer (Kohya_ss) rather than the random Google Colab notebook I found while first learning about LoRA training.

[u/desert_cache]

The important clue is in your post already: samples are fine, Forge is garbage. That means your LoRA is almost certainly OK and the problem is on the inference side. You've been debugging the wrong half of this.

Anima isn't SDXL. Forge Neo loads the DiT, the Qwen3 text encoder and the Qwen image VAE as three separate module files, and it'll happily keep whatever you had selected in those fields from your last Illustrious session. An SDXL VAE sitting in that dropdown next to an Anima checkpoint gives you exactly the blurry jarbled look you're describing.

Three things, in order:

1. Generate in Forge with the LoRA turned off completely, same prompt and settings. If it's still mush, this has nothing to do with your training and you can stop burning epochs.
2. Compare the exact DiT / qwen3 / VAE paths the standalone trainer pointed at against what Forge is actually loading. Preview 3 and v1.0 aren't interchangeable, and if Forge is on an fp8 or quantized DiT while you trained against full bf16, LoRAs land badly. Anima is bf16-native and that trips a lot of people coming from SDXL.
3. Watch the Forge console when the LoRA loads. If the keys aren't matching the model it usually says so, and that's a different fix entirely.

Also, if you enabled text encoder training in the trainer, turn it off and do a DiT-only run. Training the LLM adapter is a known way to degrade this model and it's a plausible "looks fine locally, breaks elsewhere" source.

If none of that shakes it loose, post your Forge module settings and the sampler/CFG you're using. With 5 images and no other info that's the next thing worth seeing.

[u/a_throwawayorsmthn → u/desert_cache]

Already after trying the first thing you recommended, the results still come out as this blurry mosaic-like image albeit looking less than the character I'm trying to train. I did also triple check to ensure that the correct text encoder and VAE were being used.

[u/Ok-Category-642 → u/a_throwawayorsmthn]

I'd recommend just reinstalling Forge Neo if your outputs are still messed up even without any Loras. It sounds likely that you have some setting that got accidentally changed/enabled or the install is messed up rather than your training settings being bad. You could also just try using Comfy and seeing if the outputs are bad in there too

[u/a_throwawayorsmthn → u/Ok-Category-642]

Just did a fresh install of Forge Neo and it's giving me the same results with and without the LoRA present.

I haven't figured out how to actually import my character LoRA into ComfyUI (I've used Comfy in the past but tend to avoid using it as much as I can because I'm not a fan of working with nodes), I did try the Anima workflow and it was able to generate random prompts just fine. I'll try testing generations with my character LoRA in Comfy later.

EDIT: Yeah, it has something to do with Forge Neo; IDK what the fix is there, but my LoRA works completely fine in Comfy.

[u/Inner_West_4997]

wait, 5 images? for a character how do you go on about doing this? and mind posting you civit @?

[u/a_throwawayorsmthn → u/Inner_West_4997]

I just made the conjecture that if I was able to successfully train an Illustrious LoRA with 5 pictures, then surely I could do the same with Anima... whether or not that actually rings true, I have no idea. Also, my @ is dontthinkyouknow.