Image models
Image models on CreatorStudio produce the stills that anchor every story: character portraits, keyframe references, scene thumbnails, continuity anchors. The creator never picks a model directly. Ra routes each request against the shot’s intent, the Director Memory Graph, and the credit budget.
All image models are accessed through Ra. The model layer is plumbing. Authorship stays with the storyteller.
What image generation is used for
Section titled “What image generation is used for”- Character portraits. The first pass when building a persistent cast. Creator describes the character, Ra generates candidate portraits, creator picks and locks. Locked portraits become the reference for every subsequent shot featuring that character.
- Keyframe stills. The single most important frame in each shot. Every motion-video model starts from a keyframe still; if the keyframe is right, the motion is right.
- Reference imagery. Locations, props, wardrobe. Anything that needs to stay consistent across scenes lives in the asset library as a reference image.
Supported image models
Section titled “Supported image models”| Model | Provider | Strengths | Typical use |
|---|---|---|---|
| Google Imagen 4.0 Fast | Fast, photoreal, strong on human faces | Character portraits, realistic keyframes | |
| Seedream 4.5 | ByteDance (via CSM) | Cinematic look, strong composition control, stylized consistency | Cinematic keyframes, stylized character sheets |
| FLUX 1.1 | Black Forest Labs | High-detail, excellent prompt adherence | Detail-critical keyframes, complex compositions |
More models are routed as they ship. Ra adds them; no creator migration needed.
How Ra picks an image model
Section titled “How Ra picks an image model”Routing is a judgment call, not a lookup. Ra weighs:
- Shot intent. Realism vs stylized. A finance explainer wants photoreal; a folk-tale devotional wants painted.
- Reference anchors. If the character is locked from a Seedream pass, Ra stays on Seedream for continuity.
- Cost. Imagen Fast is cheaper per image than full-quality passes. Ra uses Fast for candidates, full-quality for locks.
- Speed. When the creator is in a live editing loop, Ra biases toward faster models even if quality drops a half-step.
See How Ra picks a model for the full routing heuristic.
Working with image models in the app
Section titled “Working with image models in the app”Character generation lives in the Character Creator, reachable from any scene’s Characters tab. Keyframe generation lives on the scene editor’s Keyframes tab. Both surface a model picker for creators who want explicit control, but the default is always “let Ra decide” against the Graph.
Every generated image is written to the Assets library with provenance (model, prompt, credits spent, timestamp). Reuse, re-generate, or branch from any prior asset at any time.
Related
Section titled “Related”- Writing briefs covers the director-not-describer prompting principle that determines whether an image pass lands on the first try or the fourth.
- Character cast walks through locking characters into persistent Memory.
- Orchestration explains the routing layer that decides which model runs which shot.