Tags I've found useful for making backgrounds in Pony and Illustrious (PDXL and ILXL)
(mirror of my Civitai article with rewritten intro to reflect that it's no longer a pre-Illustrious document) Updated: Mar 24If SD1.5 does anything better than Pony and Illustrious, it was the sheer number of real world locations, both generic and specific, you could throw in prompts to get a cool background for what you were doing and you could often combine many things to get something fantastical and unique. Pony and Illustrious are, unfortunately, much more limited on the tags they can pull background details from, and Pony in particular struggles with a lot of background types. This is a list of known goods for people to use.Tags after a comma mean they’re supporting tags that make it more fleshed out and I haven’t really tried using them without the first listed. A ? means I've had a good result with it but haven’t experimented with it (or the string in parenthesis) enough to say for sure it’s useful or if it’s just other prompts/the LoRAs that in the mix doing the lifting/getting lucky.Outdoors:(badlands, crater, cliff, mountain?)beach, sand, ocean,canyoncastle backgroundcity, cityscape, street, on roof,desert, sand (, mojave desert?)fantasy village backgroundfarmfieldforest, treeslaboratory?mountainonsen, steam, wet, waterpark(ruined city, toppled skyscraper, rubble?)slums, building, outdoors, garbage, rubble, ruinswasteland, grey ground, rock, bare treeplains, grassalleyway, brick wall, trash can, dumpster, graffiti,garden, flowers (potted plant as negative if you want everything neatly in planters)mountain pass, (ridge?) Generates pic in mountains, though not as high up as desired.coast (combines well)ancient ruins, white marble pillarairplane interior (window, sitting)fitting room (much more stable on Illustrious than Pony. May want curtain, door, doorknob on negatives)mall (this is more of a Japanese style multi-level indoor shopping complex than the open plaza American mall. May be SD's tendency to make backgrounds hallway like unless told otherwise)gazebo (dreaded monster)riverbed (neg: River)marble pillarmarket stall (use with festival, and optionally fireworks to make a Japanese festival. Negative Japanese architecture for anything else and don’t expect great results)Indoors:bunker interior, underground bunker,castle background, throne,catwalk (\modeling\), stage lighting, crowdclassroom, desk, blackboardcolosseum background (this one, oddly, only seems to work better with Pony than Illustrious)fantasy village background(fantasy ruins background, maze, labyrinth?)hallwayliving room, couchshower (\location\)spacecraft interior*, (spacecraft bridge?)arcade, arcade machines,store (adding adjective for store type?)casinoclub (needs "strip club, pole" in negatives)bar, bar (place), saloon background, (the first two combine to make the bar's bar appear)shouji, fusuma, tatami (Do not use "Japanese architecture". May need negatives like doorknob, outdoors, open door, window)middle eastern architecture, palace, cushion,locker room, locker, tile floor, bench,garage (you will need to tag motor vehicle as negative if you don't want a car)underground, cave (negative sun, sky, window, outdoors to avoid sunlight shining in)warehouse, crates (this one is a bit checkpoint dependent)tavernice rink, stadium, audience (negative: pool)conservatory (surprisingly since this doesn’t have a lot of booru uses)gymnasium (a bit shaky, but works)Supporting objects:buildingcarpetceiling light (great if you want ceiling to appear due to depth or angle)grassovergrowth, vines,scenery, landscapesidewalktreetreeswaterfallpathwall/floor (ceiling works, though I've found ceiling light to make more natural in settings where it fits)rivermountain (This makes a mountain in the background, rather than set your image on a mountain)wheat (the first crop I've found that's consistently generated and generates as a crop instead of prepared dish)treasure hoard, coinslavacrowd (use with “solo focus” recomended. ILXL handles this better than PDXL. Try playing with weight to get the scene more or less densely packed. "females only" may reduce presence of males in crowd)shipping containertrashgraffitisky, cloud (often come by default, but can help angle outdoor shots away from the ground. You can color these, e.g., "black clouds", "red sky")rice paddy (only this specific name works well)Unique Locations:Specific places/landmarks. Don't expect the area around these to be accurate!Effel towerArc de Triomphe (appears to only understand views from ground level)Statue of LibertyTokyo Tower (the presence of "Tokyo" in the word means it at least knows this goes in a city)Genres:These have an influence on background. Beware their influence on other parts of image.science fictioncowboy western ("fringe trim" is a helpful negative to know)fantasyEnhancers:crampednight,undergrounddark(black background:0.5) (Makes things darker. At full strength this tends to put a lot of "blank" space in the background. I've got some notes on a full article for this and other [color] backgrounds] but haven't had time to experiment when the generator wasn't messing with colors)"Japanese architecture" as negative (useful for more western/generic buildings)Negatives:sun, sky, window, outdoors (helps makes indoor settings truly indoors)Interactions:sittinglayingleaningagainst wall, (leaning)the conjunction "on" seems to produce good results when paired with background objects and nouns. "sitting on chair", "laying on bed", "leaning on rail" etc.Known to models but poor results:“Athletics Field” and/or “Track and Field” ("running track" is a bit more stable, but exceptionally limited in angle support)Basketball CourtBedroom (This is one of the worst offenders. Especially if doors or windows are present. Some checkpoints tolerate it better than others and Illustrious is better than Pony, but it’s rarely great. I've found it is pretty good at checking for overbaking in epoch pics though.) Update: Adding "wall" helps stabilize this one for some reason. Still not ideal, but vastly more usable.Japanese architecture (this one needs heavy supporting word use to make clear which era/kind of Japanese architecture you mean, and I've concluded that you're better off just calling the elements you want)Bus stopApartment (so many different areas are under this tagsoccer fieldcanal (functions, but poor compatibly with people)Washington Monument (knows relative outline, but nothing else)Mount Rushmore (knows there’s supposed to be heads on a mountain, and nothing else)Independence HallParthenon (decent at making Romanesque architecture, bad at making the Parthenon)planetarium (interesting, but not a planetarium)courtroom*This one will alter the overall theme of the background a good deal.
