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Location Asset

Build a reusable location in the Location Studio, with time of day, weather, season, angle and lighting variants, and keep the same place in every shot.

The Location Asset node holds a reusable place: an approved establishing shot, a written description, variants for time of day, weather, seasons, camera angles and lighting, and short atmosphere clips. You build it in the full-screen Location Studio, or choose one you already have. Wire the node into Generate Image or Generate Video, or mention it with @, and every shot shows the same place.

When to use it

  • You want the same setting to look the same in every scene of a story.
  • You need an establishing shot and cutaways of one place, such as dusk, a storm or an aerial view.
  • You want image and video nodes to receive the place's description and reference photos automatically.
  • You want short ambient clips of a place, such as drifting fog or a slow dolly-in, for B-roll or as start frames.

Quick start

Add the node

Press Tab on the canvas and choose Assets › Places › Location Asset. To reuse a location you already have, click Choose existing on the node instead, and skip to the last step.

Open the Location Studio

Click Open Studio on the node, or Open Location Studio in the settings panel. The studio opens on the Appearance page.

Describe the place and generate the main image

Type a name and a description, and choose the category and the style. Choose how many candidates to make, then click Generate. With one candidate, the result becomes the main image. With two or four, click Approve on the one you want.

Add variants

Generate time of day, weather, season, angle and lighting variants, or motion clips, on the pages in the sidebar. With Style Lock on, every variant starts from the approved main image.

Use the location

Close the studio. Connect the node's Location output to the Assets input of Generate Image or Generate Video, or type @ and the location's name in their prompt.

promptassetsassetsstart frameassetsLocation AssetRainy Tokyo alleyCharacter AssetMayaTextMaya runs through the alleyGenerate ImageGenerate Video
A location and a character feed one image, and the location also anchors the video made from it.

The node on the canvas

The node is a compact summary of the location. It shows:

  • The approved main image, or a placeholder until one is approved.
  • The location's name, its style and category, and Style locked when Style Lock is on.
  • Six counters for the variants: TOD (time of day), Weather, Seasons, Angles, Lighting and Motion. A counter shows a spinner while a variant is generating.
  • An Open Studio button that opens the Location Studio.
  • A Choose existing button, which becomes Replace once the node has a location.

All editing happens in the Location Studio. The settings panel shows a summary, an Open Location Studio button, the Choose from library or gallery row and the Style Lock switch.

Inputs and outputs

InputAcceptsWhat it does
PromptText nodes and pickersExtra context for the main image when the node generates it.
CinematographyLook and camera pickers, such as Lighting, Atmosphere or LensTheir wording is added to the location's description when the node generates its main image.
OutputCarriesConnect it to
LocationThe location's identity: the main image, the canonical description and the Style Lock stateThe Assets input of Generate Image, Generate Video and other nodes that accept locations
ImageThe establishing shot as a plain picture, with no descriptionAny image input, such as References or Start Frame

Style Lock

Style Lock is the most important consistency switch of a location. It is on by default. Toggle it in the studio header or in the node's settings panel.

Style LockVariantsImage and video nodes that use the location
On (default)Made from the approved main image, so the same building, materials and layout appear in each oneReceive the canonical description as written
OffMade from text alone, so each one can reinterpret the placeTreat the description as loose guidance

Keep Style Lock on for a film or a series. Turn it off only for mash-ups, alternate looks or A/B comparisons.

The Location Studio

The Location Studio is a full-screen editor with a sidebar of pages:

GroupPages
ResourcesReferences
IdentityAppearance
EnvironmentTime of Day, Weather, Seasons
CompositionAngles, Lighting
AtmosphereMotion
SheetSheet, Board

The studio saves as you work. Generation runs on the server: if you close the studio or the tab while a variant is generating, the result is still added to the location. If the location was changed in another tab, the studio asks you to reload instead of overwriting the newer version.

Appearance

The Appearance page holds the identity of the location and its main image:

  • Name, Description, Category and Style. The categories are indoor, outdoor, urban, nature, fantasy, sci-fi, historical, futuristic and other. The styles are realistic, anime, 3d-pixar and illustration.
  • Generate makes candidate main images. Choose 1, 2 or 4 candidates. With 1, the result becomes the main image directly. With 2 or 4, each candidate appears with Approve and Discard.
  • Main image shows the approved establishing shot.
  • Canonical description shows the detailed visual description written automatically when you approve the main image, about 80 to 120 words. Edit it freely. If writing it failed, the main image is still set, and Retry caption writes it again.

Earlier candidates stay available: the studio shows the most recent ones, up to 5, and the current main image does not change until you approve another.

References

The References page holds a mood board of up to 20 reference photos. Give each photo a kind: wide, interior, exterior, detail, mood board or other. The kind tells the model what each photo is for, for example a wide-angle reference or a detail.

The photos travel with the location. Every image and video node that uses the location receives them as extra references. To leave them out on one node, remove them from that node's injected references with the × button.

Before you add the first photo, confirm that you have the rights to the photos and that any people in them agreed to their use as references. For an unfamiliar or fantastical place, 3 to 6 photos give the model enough context to get it right the first time.

Environment and composition variants

The five variant pages share one layout: the variants made so far, a row of preset chips, a field for your own prompt and a Generate All button that queues every missing preset.

PagePresets
Time of Daydawn, morning, noon, afternoon, golden hour, dusk, blue hour, night, midnight
Weatherclear, cloudy, light rain, heavy rain, storm, snow, blizzard, fog, mist
Seasonsspring, summer, autumn, winter
Angleswide, medium, closeup, aerial, low-angle, eye-level, bird's-eye, dutch tilt
Lightingsoft natural, harsh sunlight, golden, blue hour, neon, candlelit, cinematic, dramatic chiaroscuro

Click a preset chip to generate that variant, or type your own, such as "after a sandstorm". The name of each variant is the tag you use to pick it later.

Motion

The Motion page makes short, looping atmosphere clips from the approved main image, such as drifting fog, a slow dolly-in or a drone fly-over. It needs an approved main image first.

  • Presets: slow dolly-in, slow pan-left, slow pan-right, push up, drone fly-over, gentle drift, parallax and static atmospheric.
  • Your own prompt: describe what moves and how, for example "fog rolls in from the left while light beams shift slowly".
  • Models: Kling 2.6 (default), Kling 2.5 Turbo Pro, Kling 3.0, Wan 2.6 I2V, Wan 2.7 I2V and Seedance 2.
  • Frame: 16:9, the shape of a cinematic establishing shot.

A clip costs the same as the same image-to-video generation on that model.

Sheet and Board

The Sheet page composes reference sheets from the location's images, such as a turnaround, a variation sheet or a detail sheet. See the Reference Sheet node. The Board page combines several of the location's images into one board image.

Use the location in a prompt

Wire the location into the Assets input, or mention it with @ and its name in the prompt of an image or video node. A mention can also pick one variant and a role:

  • @oldlibrary:1 uses the main image.
  • @oldlibrary:1:weather/rain uses the rain variant.
  • @oldlibrary:1:weather/rain:lighting takes only the lighting from the rain variant.

The default role of a location is location. Other roles include background, atmosphere, layout, lighting and style. Add ~lock to a mention to make the model match the place's architecture, layout and lighting exactly. Read Reference roles for every role.

Choose an existing location

Click Choose existing on the node, or Choose from library or gallery in the settings panel. The picker has two tabs:

  • My Library: the locations you saved.
  • Public Gallery: locations shared with everyone. Choosing one copies it into your library first, and the node uses your copy. The Public Gallery is available on Nodaro Cloud and the Business edition.

Once the node has a location, the buttons read Replace. The node takes the whole location, with its main image and every variant and clip. If you pick a gallery location you copied before, the picker asks whether to use your copy or Make a new copy.

Delete and restore

Deleting a location archives it. An archived location disappears from your lists, but nodes that already use it keep working, and you can restore it.

  • To remove a location from My Library, point at its card in the picker and click the trash icon.
  • The Location Library page lists your active and archived locations. Restore brings an archived location back. If its name is now taken, "(restored)" is added to the name.
  • Permanently delete on an archived location removes it for good. To confirm, type the location's exact name.

Credits

Generations in the studio are charged at the price of the model you choose. A motion clip costs the same as the same image-to-video generation on that model.

Tips

  • Approve the main image first. Every variant, every clip and the canonical description start from it.
  • Make several candidates for unusual places. For a fantastical or unfamiliar place, generate 2 or 4 candidates and pick the best one.
  • Let the description write itself, then refine it. The automatic description gets the model-friendly words right, such as architecture, vegetation, light and scale. Edit it from there.
  • Add a mood board for unfamiliar places. 3 to 6 reference photos lead to more faithful first results.
  • Keep one style per project. Use the same style for every location of a project.
  • Make a clip of every location you cut away to. A 5-second drift or dolly works as a start frame for video nodes and as filler between scenes.

From the API

Every studio operation is also available to code and to AI assistants: create a location, generate and approve the main image, add variants and atmosphere clips, and archive or restore it. See Locations and the MCP tools.

Frequently asked questions

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