Alpaca has two primary settings to manage your renders:
  • Details: This dictates how extensively your input is rendered.
  • Freedom: This determines how closely the render adheres to your input’s intent.
For beginners using Alpaca, our presets can be used to easily switch between different modes. These presets automatically adjust Details and Freedom for you.
As you become more familiar with Alpaca, learning how to manually adjust these settings will provide you with precise control over your renders. Now, let’s check what those settings do separately.
We are going to use the following sketch as our example:
ai rendering of a car 1
And our prompt will always be a super car in the desert, ultra realistic.

​
Details

Details can be adjusted between 0 and 100. A value of 0 means no rendering will occur (which is usually not very useful, except in some specific use cases) while a value of 100 indicates maximum rendering. Now, let’s look at an example where we gradually increase the Details value, while keeping Freedom untouched.
ai rendering of a car 1ai rendering of a car 2ai rendering of a car 3ai rendering of a car 4

Progressively increasing Details (click to zoom)

As we increase the strength, our original sketch becomes progressively more rendered in the style of the prompt.

​
Freedom

Freedom also goes from 0 to 100. A value of 0 means the model should not be given any freedom when it comes to the composition, structure and colors of the render. A freedom of 100 means that the model should not get too concerned about what our initial sketch represents, and should instead treat it simply as a loose starting point. This time, let’s keep Details constant with a value of 100, and let’s see what varying Freedom does to our renders:
ai rendering of a car 4ai rendering of a car 6ai rendering of a car 7ai rendering of a car 8

Progressively increasing Freedom (click to zoom)

Here we can see that the level of rendering is not affected by Freedom (they all look equally realistic), however as we increase freedom, our renders become less and less faithful to our original sketch. This is particularly useful in a few scenarios, for example:
  • If you have a very rough sketch and you don’t want Alpaca to follow it too closely
  • If you want to generate a few variations around an image you like
  • Any other scenario where you want to give Alpaca a bit of creative freedom, this will give you more unexpected results, which can be great for ideation
Here is an example where giving a bit of Freedom to the model leads to better result.
ai rendering of a bike 1ai rendering of a bike 2ai rendering of a bike 3
We begin with a simple, hastily drawn sketch. While this is enough to communicate an idea, the proportions and perspective are slightly off. If we set Alpaca’s Freedom to 0, the render may also be inaccurate. By giving a bit of Freedom (in this case, 30), we can achieve a more accurate render that still stays true to our original sketch.