Should I use a Character or an Animal/Creature asset for my pet?

Use Animal/Creature for animals, pets and fantasy creatures. It has poses and variations made for animals and a free-text species field. Character is built for people, with a portrait, expressions and roles such as face and clothes.

Can I make a creature that does not exist, such as a griffin?

Yes. Species / Type is free text. The suggestions come from an animal catalog, but you can type any creature, such as griffin or dragon.

Yes. Choose a voice on the Voice page of Creature Studio. When you connect the creature to a Text to Speech node, its voice fills in that node when the workflow runs.

How do I mention a creature in a prompt?

Type @ with the creature's name and a number, for example @nessie:1, or add a role, such as @nessie:1:markings. Type creature mentions by hand, because the @ menu does not list creatures.

Animals and creatures — keep a pet, animal or fantasy creature consistent in AI images and video

Build a reusable animal or creature in Creature Studio, from a family pet to a dragon, with angles, poses, variations, motion clips and a voice.

An animal or creature asset keeps one specific animal looking the same in every image and video, from a family dog to a dragon. You build it once in Creature Studio from an approved main image, then add angles, poses, variations, motion clips and a voice. Connect the Animal/Creature Asset node wherever the creature appears.

Which asset to use

You want	Use
Any animal of a kind in one prompt, such as "a fox"	The Animal picker. It adds words to the prompt and keeps no identity.
One specific animal or creature across many shots	The Animal/Creature asset, described on this page.
One specific person across many shots	The Character asset. See Character Studio.

What a creature holds

Part	What it is
Main image	The approved picture of the creature. Every variant and motion clip is made from it.
Canonical description	A description of 80 to 120 words, written from the main image when you approve it. Connected nodes add it to their prompts.
Angles	The creature from other viewpoints.
Poses	The creature in other postures, such as sitting or running.
Variations	The creature at another age, coloring or look, such as juvenile or battle-scarred.
Motion clips	Short videos made from the main image, such as a walk cycle.
Reference photos	Up to 20 photos of the real animal or of the look you want.
Voice	A voice for a talking animal.
Style Lock	Keeps every variant anchored to the main image. On by default.

Create a creature

Add the node and open the studio

Press Tab on the canvas and choose Assets › Creatures › Animal/Creature Asset. Click Open Studio on the node, or select the node and click Open Creature Studio in the settings panel.

Add reference photos

On References, add photos of the animal. For a real pet, a clear front photo and a side photo help the model match it. Choose the kind (front, side, detail, context, mood board or other), paste the photo's URL and click Add.

Name the creature and set its species

On Appearance, enter a Name, such as "Ember the fox". In Species / Type, choose a suggestion or type any animal or creature, such as "red fox", "griffin" or "dragon". Add a Description of the form, fur or scales, colors and distinctive features.

Generate and approve the main image

Choose 1, 2 or 4 Candidates and click Generate. With one candidate, the result becomes the main image automatically. With two or four, click Approve on the one you want, or Discard on the others.

Save

Click Save in the header to keep the name, the species, the description and Style Lock. Generated pictures and clips are saved to the creature on their own.

Approving costs no credits and writes the Canonical description, which appears under the main image. Be precise in Species / Type: "arctic fox with a thick winter coat" gives the model more than a category.

The node also has a Creature type input. Connect an Animal picker to it, and the picker's choice is added to the creature's generation prompt.

Angles, poses and variations

Page	Presets
Angles	front, side, top, back, three-quarter, detail, in-context, low-angle, high-angle
Poses	standing, sitting, lying-down, walking, running, jumping, alert, playful, aggressive
Variations	juvenile, adult, elder, albino, melanistic, battle-scarred, majestic, fluffy, sleek

Click a preset to generate that variant. Generate All generates every preset that is still missing.
Type in the custom prompt and click Generate for any other variant.
On Poses, click Browse Pose catalog to pick a pose from the catalog. Each pick generates a variant with the catalog's wording.

Each picture costs one image on the creature's image model. Generate the angles first. They are the most useful references when the creature appears in a scene.

Style Lock

Style Lock is on for every new creature. While it is on, every variant is generated from the approved main image and its canonical description. The form and the species then stay the same across poses and variations.

Turn it off in the studio header or in the node's settings panel when you want a freer take. For example, turn it off to explore designs for a new creature.

Motion clips

The Motion page turns the approved main image into short clips of the creature moving.

Approve a main image first. Until then, Generate is disabled.
Presets: idle-breathing, walk-cycle, run-cycle, head-turn, tail-wag, pounce, stretch, roar, fly-loop.
Models: Kling 2.5 Turbo Pro (the default), Kling 2.6, Kling 3.0, Hailuo 02 I2V Pro, Hailuo 2.3 Standard, Wan 2.6 I2V, Seedance and Bytedance Lite I2V.
Frame: 1:1 by default. 3:4, 16:9 and 9:16 are also available.
Cost: a clip costs the same as an image-to-video run on the chosen model.

Give the creature a voice

The Voice page works like the one in Character Studio.

Browse the ElevenLabs voices, or Design from text to audition a described voice.
Describe the voice in free text, for example "gravelly, slow, ancient".
In Talk, type a line and click Speak to hear it in the creature's voice. With an approved main image, Speak + lip-sync portrait renders a short talking clip.

Connect the creature to a Text to Speech node, and the creature's voice fills in that node when the workflow runs. A voice set on the Text to Speech node itself always wins.

Use a creature in your scenes

Connect the node's Animal/Creature output to the Assets input of a Generate Image or Generate Video node. The node receives the main image, the reference photos and the canonical description.

A creature and a location feed the same image node; the image then becomes the first frame of a video.

To place the creature exactly where you want it in the sentence, mention it in the prompt. The mention name comes from the creature's name: "Nessie" becomes @nessie:1.

Mention	What the node writes into the prompt
`@nessie:1`	"the creature from reference image A", in place of the mention.
`@nessie:1:markings`	"the markings from reference image A".
`@nessie:1:scales`	Any custom word works: "the scales from reference image A".
`@nessie:1~lock`	Turns the identity lock on for this mention: a short line asks the model to keep this creature exactly.
`@nessie:1~nolock`	Turns the identity lock off for this mention only.

The roles for a creature are creature (the default), anatomy, markings, pose, color and style, or any word of your own.

Type creature mentions by hand. The @ menu and the mention pills cover characters, locations and named images, not creatures. The mention matters: without one, the creature's phrase is added at the end of the prompt, apart from the name in your sentence.

Prompt

a wide shot of @nessie:1 rising from the lake at dawn

With the mention, the prompt reads "a wide shot of the creature from reference image A rising from the lake at dawn". Read Reference roles for the full grammar.

The Image output of the node is the main image as a plain picture, without the description.

Use a creature you already have

Click Choose existing on the node, or Choose from Library / Gallery in the settings panel.

My Library lists your own creatures.
Public Gallery lists creatures shared by the community. Choosing one copies it into your library first. The tab appears on multi-user installs, such as Nodaro Cloud.

Choosing or replacing a creature brings its main image and every variant and clip, so connected nodes use it at once.

Delete and restore a creature

In the asset picker's My Library tab, point at a creature and click Delete from library. The creature is archived, and nodes that use it keep working. An archived creature can be restored with the API or the SDK. If a restored creature's name is already taken, "(restored)" is added to it.

Tips

Approve a strong main image first. With Style Lock on, it anchors every other picture.
Write the species precisely. "Arctic fox with a thick winter coat" beats "fox".
Use reference photos for real pets. They give the model the real animal to match.
Generate angles before poses and variations. Angles are the most useful references in scenes.

From code and agents

The REST API and the SDK create creatures, generate and approve main images, add variants and motion clips, and archive and restore creatures. See Creatures.

The MCP tools include generate_creature, approve_creature_main_image, recaption_creature, generate_creature_motion, list_creatures and get_creature. They cannot delete or restore a creature. See the MCP tools.

Animals and creatures