Anima Artist Preset (Advanced)

The pack started life as a manual mixer with a pile of knobs, and AnimaArtistPreset is the attempt to replace that pile with one dropdown. It takes a single preset choice and expands it into the full set of combine/fusion/strength settings that AnimaArtistPresetApply will use. If AnimaArtistBasic is the beginner door and AnimaArtistOptions is the expert basement, this is the floor most people actually live on.

The presets, in plain language

• balanced - original-style output_avg + interpolate. The default, and the closest thing to the pre-preset mixer.
• strong_style - strength pushed to 1.65. The "make it more obvious" button.
• stable_seed - delta-capped output_avg with auto layers 9–20; content-safer cross-seed behavior.
• drift_auto - a runtime decision from your base prompt and artist count: wide/background-heavy scenes route to scene_lock, simple fullbody/broad portraits to drift_soft, 4+ artist close-ups to stable_seed, small close-up faces to face_lock. This is the "stop thinking, pick for me" preset.
• drift_soft - EMA output_avg for portrait/broad-subject prompts.
• face_lock - base_preserve + token norm lock for close-up faces.
• scene_lock - base_preserve + light EMA for wide scenes.
• anchor_lock - single-anchor Q with user blend, strength 0.9, auto layers 9–15. The heaviest built-in stabilizer.
• fast_preview - concat path, speed first. Good for hunting, less precise as a mixer.
• identity_guard - base_preserve + norm/delta guard; protects identity/composition.
• prompt_passthrough - the no-mixer direct prompt path, while preserving positive 1.2::artist:: weighting.
• compatibility_safe - concat + concat_with_base, plays nice with regional prompting and other attention patchers.

The other inputs

intensity (0–2, default 1) multiplies into strength for most presets - fast_preview and compatibility_safe ignore it. normalize_weights (default on; ::weight in the chain still bypasses it). layer_mode gives a global layer-range shortcut: auto, all_layers, style_core (0–18), detail_layers (12–63), or custom with your own custom_layer_filter (e.g. 0,3,5-10,-1).

Outputs

preset (ANIMA_PRESET) → AnimaArtistPresetApply.preset. advanced_options (ANIMA_OPTS), in case you want to also wire the explicit options. And summary - a STRING describing what the preset actually resolved to, which is your sanity check.

Install

Manager → search "Anima Artist Mixer Forge", or:

cd ComfyUI/custom_nodes
git clone https://github.com/peter119lee/Anima-Artist-Mixer-Forge

then restart. No extra dependencies; standard Anima files + Anima-compatible CLIP loader. Remove the original Anima-Artist-Mixer if present (duplicate node names).

My take

A genuinely useful progression: start balanced, go stable_seed or drift_auto when you want seed-to-seed style consistency, and reach for compatibility_safe only when you're also using regional prompts or Forge Couple-style routing - the README is explicit that it's not the default multi-artist style path, it's the "other attention patchers are present" escape hatch. anchor_lock is a stabilizer, not a style; if your results feel locked to one composition, that's the preset to blame.