Control Net Parameters
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Sacred Geometry Series
- 1Study
- 2Series 1: Mage + Symbology
- 3Series 2: Explanation
- 4Series 3: Angel + Demon, Seed of Life
- 5Technical Details
- 6Series 4: Angel + Demon, Metatron’s Cube
- 7Series 5: Fire Dragon
Control Net Series
Overview
This infographic gives an overview of all the parameters used in a control net.
Images
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Control Nets
For the Sacred Geometry series, two control nets are used:
Both Canny and Line Art are used to process lines and edges. The difference is what they are used for. Canny is used to process the lines of the forms, such as the outline of buildings or the outline of shapes an figures. Line Art is generally used to process artworks done as black and white ink drawings, e.g. manga.
The illustrations used to drive the Sacred Geometry series are custom drawn illustrations with Adobe Illustrator.
Images

Parameters
THe five main parameters governing any control net are:
Weight
Weight is the influence that control net has on your prompt. How strongly should it be applied?
- 1.0. 100% influence.
- 0.0. 0% influence, i.e. no influence at all.
- 0.5. 50% influence. Half.
Starting Step
When should the control net start to influence the prompt? Range of value is 0.0 - 1.0. Values are expressed as the percentage of steps.
For a render with 50 steps:
- 0.0. Start at step 0.
- 0.3. Start at step 15.
- 0.5. Start at step 25.
- 0.7. Start at step 35.
- 1.0. Start at step 50.
For a render with 30 steps:
- 0.0. Start at step 0.
- 0.3. Start at step 9.
- 0.5. Start at step 15.
- 0.7. Start at step 21.
- 1.0. Start at step 30.
Canny - Start 0
Since Canny controls how the space is divided, if you start Canny early at step 0, then your figures won’t be able to fill out the space, and you will have renders like these:
Images

Canny - Start Later
If instead of start later, then the figures will form after the lines are somewhat denoised, then it would be able to place the figures inside the entire image.
Images
Ending Step
When should the control net stop influencing the prompt? Range of value is 0.0 - 1.0. Values are expressed as the percentage of steps.
For a render with 50 steps:
- 0.0. End at step 0.
- 0.3. End at step 15.
- 0.5. End at step 25.
- 0.7. End at step 35.
- 1.0. End at step 50.
For a render with 30 steps:
- 0.0. End at step 0.
- 0.3. End at step 9.
- 0.5. End at step 15.
- 0.7. End at step 21.
- 1.0. End at step 30.
Canny - End 1
If you end Canny at 1.0, then the lines will be visibly present in the final render.
Images
Canny - End Early
If you end Canny early, e.g. 0.5 - 0.7, then while the lines would have influenced the composition of the figures, but they may not appear in the final render.
Images

Resolution
Even if you’re rendering at 512x512, you should set your preprocessor at 1024x1024. This allows maximum fidelity of fine lines and details.
Priority
There are three modes for priorities:
- Balanced. Default
- Prompt-priroity, aka “My prompt is more important”.
- Control-net priority, aka “Control net is more important”.
For control nets such as canny and line art, the differences are quite subtle. But for control nets intended for style transfers, for exmaple, Shuffle and Reference Only, generally speaking, you should use the Contorl-net priority so that the styles will be fully applied.
You can set different priorities for different control nets.
For Canny and Line Art in the Sacred Geometry Series, I used Balanced. Usually this works tbe best but you shoudl always experiemnt with this setting together with weight to find the true balance.
The two settings are related but it has some differences. I understand the nuance but putting it into words is difficult. I will try to explain it in the future.
Text Prompt is always the king
Whether you use control nets or not, it’s important to remember that the text prompt is always the king. In order to realize the image, you will need to add prompts to realize it. Unless you put what you wanted in the text prompt, they won‘t be realized.
I will use the following images from the Sacred Geometry series to illustrate this.
Illustration
This mage is backed by an illustration of the symbol, because that’s what was asked.
Images

Particles, Magic Dust
If instead you ask for magic dust and light particles, then the lines will be able to turn into particles instead.
Images

Hologram
Images

Paper Ribbons
Images

Laser Lights
Images

Red Ropes
Images

Drawstrings from Shower Curtain
Images

Red Rope
Images
Black plastic tubes
Images
Blue Ribbons
Images

Tech
- 30 steps, DPM++ SDE Karras, 512x512
- Airfuck’s Wild Mix v1, 0.5 Denoising
- Adetailer: face_yolov8n.pt
- CN0: Canny, Weight 1, Start 0.5, End 1, Res 1024
- CN1: Line Art, Weight 1, Start 0.4, End 1, Res 1024
- Hires: 1.5, 15 steps, 4x_NMKD-Siax_200k, 768x768
- Topaz Gigapixel HQ 4x, 3072x3072
- Adobe Lightroom color correction
- Adobe Photoshop AI inpainting / limb fix