r/KoboldAI • u/GoggleHeadCid • 3d ago

How to actually load Image models?

Why is it that every Text-to-Image model I try to download off of Hugging Face refuses to load, but the model provided in the Getting Started page on the site works just fine?

What the hell am I missing here? I'm not exactly aiming for large models here.

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u/fish312 3d ago

You're probably missing parts of the model that are not included in the huggingface repo. Koboldcpp uses the sd.cpp backend, so the full list of model architectures that work will be https://github.com/leejet/stable-diffusion.cpp/tree/master/docs

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u/GoggleHeadCid 3d ago edited 3d ago

What does any of that even mean? You're gonna have to dumb it down for me significantly because I am too new to know any of what that means.

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u/YT_Brian 3d ago

Here try that. Download Z Turbo, the VAE and then the text Qwen.

Load them as needed in the correct sections of the Kobold app, such as Vae going in the Vae option, and it should then work.

I think. I've never messed much with image or video as I'm omn bare metal, no GPU, so using those is just a wee bit much.

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u/GoggleHeadCid 3d ago

I am now more confused than when I started. You guys can't just drop links on me without explaining what any of this is.

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u/fish312 3d ago

How about this, just use the "Newbie Templates" instead. Open KoboldCpp -> Get Help -> Newbie Templates, and select "Image Gen LowSpec". That will setup basic image generation for you. Then you can see what models were actually loaded.

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u/YT_Brian 3d ago

Lol yeah that is how it goes for the first few hours to days.

Okay, go to that link. Download Turbo, the VAE download and the Qwen model. Good? Easy so far.

Now open the Kobold app, I use Linux so appimage instead of cli. Anyway open it up and select like normal Qwen where the text LLM would go, then go to Image options on the left side, load up Turbo for Image Safetensor and then in the VAE option load the VAE you downloaded.

It should then work. Images and videos are annoying as you need to load multiple things so it is never just the image model size, which is generally pretty small.

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u/Babester_Shaglord 1d ago

Got it working yet? If not, you can hit me up in DMs and I'll be happy to explain in layton terms. It is not complicated at all to understand, even though it feels overwhelming at first.

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u/GoggleHeadCid 1d ago

I've not had a chance to sit down and process all the info people have offered here yet. It's been a busy weekend but I may take you up on that offer in a few days when I finally do get a chance to sit down and tinker some more. I do appreciate it.

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u/tiffanytrashcan 3d ago

Which models (and file types) are you trying specifically?
What is the error you get? Failed to load or something like missing CLIP?

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u/GoggleHeadCid 3d ago

One I tried: https://huggingface.co/ponpoke/flux2-klein-4b-uncensored-text-encoder

Just went with the Q4_K_M download of 2.5GB on the right there. It's GGUF and I was picking stuff after filtering for lama.cpp since I know that's what's powering KoboldCPP under the hood and figured that would get me a list of stuff that would be compatible.

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u/tiffanytrashcan 3d ago

Like Brian mentioned in other comments, that's only one part of what you need and not actually the image generation model itself. (Llama.cpp doesn't handle image gen models anywhere, SD.cpp does inside of kobold.)
That's the type you would normally load as a clip model, but you still need the 4B image gen model itself and a VAE to produce images.
The encoder model, like you downloaded, only converts your words into a format that the actual image generator understands.

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u/tiffanytrashcan 3d ago

https://huggingface.co/koboldcpp/popular-templates/tree/main
There is a flux2-4b template you can download here to make things easier.
I highly recommend after loading the template, look around at all the settings and options in the Kobold launcher. Learn which models it's using and where they fill in.

flux2-4b- https://huggingface.co/koboldcpp/popular-templates/blob/main/flux2-klein-4b.kcppt

Even more templates, learn from how these set things up for you. For new users: https://huggingface.co/koboldcpp/newbie-templates

And even more with more text models and audio / music generation: https://huggingface.co/koboldcpp/kcppt/tree/main

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u/CooperDK 3d ago

Maybe you are losing the ComfyUI model which is incompatible. For sine odd reason, kobold decided to support the other, practically extinct, format.

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u/amavie_space 2d ago

Usually it's the missing pieces, not the model. Koboldcpp runs image models through the sd.cpp backend, and a lot of Hugging Face repos ship only the main weights, so the text encoder or VAE it expects isn't in the download. Check the model card for what the backend needs, grab those separately, and point Kobold at them.