Show HN: 3.0 Version of Invoke AI – open-source SD UI and Node-based Back end [video]
Hey all -

Invoke started as one of the earliest Stable Diffusion UIs (you may remember it as “lstein”), and has evolved significantly into a full fledged react/typescript web app.

We’ve been hard at work building a professional-grade backend to support our commercial move to serving businesses and enterprise with a hosted offering (invoke.ai), while keeping Invoke one of the best ways to self-host and create content as an open-core project.

As of 3.0, all of the developments we’ve been working on and tweaking for our hosted environment are available to install and use locally, including an API and graph-based execution architecture - And, to demonstrate our commitment to free and open-source software, we’ve updated our license to the most explicitly permissive license available - Apache 2.0.

—

New SD Support in our 3.0 Version:

- SDXL Support - We’ve implemented support the impending SDXL model architecture (And the current 0.9 model), and we’ll follow-up with streamlined SDXL support in the core UI interfaces once the 1.0 model is released.
- ControlNet - Integrated support for the most popular ControlNet models, directly in the UI, with a simple processor preview and UI/UX.
- Boards - Expanded gallery support to better organize and manage large scale images. Multi-select, drag & drop to anywhere in the UI, and backed by a local database to provide performant operations even when you’re thousands of images deep.
- Expanded Schedulers - Rather than list all of them here… All the schedulers/samplers you know and love, with the ability to set favorites and disable those you’ll never use.
- Model Flexibility - Swap your VAE on demand. Mix and match models as needed. Clip Skip. With the flexibility of the experimental Node Editor, you can even swap models mid-generation.
- LoRA Enhancements - Full LoRA support (for all the Lo’s and Ly’s you can name), we’ve also added a mechanism which directly patches the model UNet on loading a LoRA. Test for yourself.
- UI/UX Updates - Across the board, we’ve worked to clean up the UI, optimize the options panel for the most commonly used features, and left a number of the tiny little microinteractions across the app that make using Invoke easy for your workflow. It’s our best UI yet, hands down. And more is coming.
- Node Editor (Experimental) - The main reason 3.0 took as long as it did (5 months!) is because we disassembled the entire backend of the application, and put it back together one “node” at a time. It’s clean, streamlined, and scalable. This sets us up to drive powerful advanced experiences for power users and gives an easy way for contributors to extend the capabilities of Invoke. The Node Editor that exposes all of the available functionality in the background is in an “experimental” status, for explorers and developers - Mainly because we have a lot of UI/UX polish we want to apply to it, and provide better ways to help less experienced users be successful with it!

—

*Up Next*

More is coming. We have plans to extend on many of the core UI/UX experiences in the application, add more community resources for sharing new plug-ins/nodes, and will release the full version of the Node Editor in 3.1. Stay tuned!

–-

Whether you're a dev looking to build on or contribute to the project, a professional looking for pro-grade tools to incorporate into your workflow, or just looking for a great open-source SD experience, we're looking forward to you joining our community.

You can get the latest version on GitHub https://github.com/invoke-ai/InvokeAI/releases