I sometimes get requests to make a realistic Lora of a character for Pony. Honestly, I can't fulfill these requests. Since I don't plan on getting rich with my Loras, I'm publishing my "recipe". It might be helpful to someone just starting out. Also, if other experienced users have any suggestions, they're welcome.
Below I explain the steps of training on Civitai, hoping to be as detailed as possible.
Create > Train a Lora
Choose Image
Choose Character
Choose a name then Next
Agree the various disclaimers
Add your images: I usually upload hundreds of images in various poses, although experts say 40-50 are enough. The important thing is to upload at least ten photos of just the face, possibly cropping out some of the full-body images already uploaded. The size of the images does not matter. Try to use quality images.
Choose a unique trigger word.
Click AutoLabel
Choose Tag, Max Tags = 20, Min Threshold =0.3
Submit
Review the tag clicking on Tag viewer.
I suggest removing the character's constant characteristics from the tags. For example: if the character has always black hair and blue eyes I suggest to remove "black hair" anf "blue eyes".
Please note: there are some tags banned and they are blocking the process. So remove blocking tags (obviously do not train Loras of prohibited material!).
Then Next
As a base model choose Custom. It costs a little more (1000 buzz) but gives better results. For realistic Loras I choosed Pony Realism 2.3 and sometimes Halcyon Pony.
Advanced Settings
You can choose (optional) Sample media prompts (to have fun while waiting).
Training Parameters... I only write the values that I change:
Num Repeats = 4
Train Batch size = 5
So Steps are 8 x number of images submitted.
If you are rich you can increase the number of epochs (leaving constant the other parameters).
Click "shuffle tags".
Put Keep tokens = 1
Click "Flip augmentation"
The total cost of the training appears below. Submit.
Wait...
Download the last epoch.
The most faithful generations to the originals imho are obtained using realistic models such as Real Dream, Halcyon Pony, LucentXL, untitled.pony.
With this procedure, you should get a Lora of the same quality as mine. Enjoy!