MakeVoxMakeVox
All guides

Visuals

Cast looks: lock how your characters look

3 min read

Nothing breaks the spell of a visual story like a character who looks different in every picture. Cast looks (in the Studio) gives each character one canonical look, generated in your story's style and locked in place, so the face you choose is the face that shows up everywhere your story turns visual.

Tip. Cast looks is how your characters look. How they sound is cast separately, in Read & listen → Cast & voices; the cast list in World and the Video step's cast reminder both link straight to it.

Generate a look

Open a character's Look section and generate a portrait candidate. It draws on what you have already written about them, their traits, their profile, described in your story's visual style, framed as a clean reference portrait so the details read clearly. Design a look shows its price on the button (one image's credits), so you know what it takes before you press it.

A character's Look section with generated portrait candidates
Generate candidates, then choose the one that looks like your character.

Lock the one that fits

When a candidate looks right, lock it. That is the moment the character stops being a description and becomes a face. From here on, every render that includes this character, a storyboard frame, a comic panel, a video shot, is handed that locked image as a reference, so the same face, wardrobe, and build hold across all of them.

Refine with "same character, but..."

A locked look is not a dead end. Ask for a refinement, older, a different outfit, a scar they picked up in chapter nine, and the new candidate is generated as a revision of the same face, with the current look riding along as a reference. You are steering the same person, not starting over with a stranger.

A locked character look with a refinement prompt
"Same character, but..." revises the face you already locked.

Where the locked look shows up

Once a character's look is locked, you do not have to think about it again. Storyboard frames, comic panels, and video shots all carry that reference automatically wherever the character appears, so a face you approved on day one is still the same face in the last scene.

Tip. Lock your main cast's looks before you storyboard or render video. Consistency is much easier to keep than to fix after the fact.

Keep reading