> Either I’m using it seriously wrong or SD can only generate vague blobs
You are definitely using it wrong, if the alternative is “SD can only generate vague blobs”. Even the base SD models are much better than that (though, the strength of the SD ecosystem is the availability of custom checkpoints, hypernetworks, LORAs, embdeddings, ControlNet, etc., not just the base models.)
Went back to do some more tests now, and funny enough I can actually get it to make decent stuff after realizing that it just completely sucks at below 512px (I was initially running it at 128x256 to speed up generation). I guess I should stop listening to advice from morons on reddit who said that lower res + upscaling works fine. Lol.
Not sure why there's even an option to go below 512.
You are definitely using it wrong, if the alternative is “SD can only generate vague blobs”. Even the base SD models are much better than that (though, the strength of the SD ecosystem is the availability of custom checkpoints, hypernetworks, LORAs, embdeddings, ControlNet, etc., not just the base models.)