Cast — one face, approved once, reused everywhere
Open Cast →A cast member is an identity: a name, a physical description, a look, a voice, and a small set of reference images of which exactly one is approved. The approved image is the one every other app reads, which is how a character survives being drawn in Film Studio on Monday and in Creator on Friday. Cast can also put that character into a photograph you already have.
Before you start: Cast has no upload of its own — reference photos come from your asset library. If you need to put one there first, generate it in Creator or add it through the picker with Also save to my asset library ticked.
What Cast makes
- A cast member — the identity record the other studios read.
- A reference sheet — a rendered turnaround, expression grid, costume set or portrait, filed in your asset library.
- An approved face — the single image every app uses. Nothing is approved until you say so.
- A house style — the look read off the references, in words you can edit, reusable elsewhere.
- Swapped photographs — a picture you own with this character in it, saved as a new library file.
Walkthrough: describe, draw, approve
Press New character
There is no dialog — the member is created immediately and you rename it in place. Everything after this is editing.
Write a description that is physical and specific
This is the single field that decides whether the character is reproducible. "A wise leader" renders as a different person every time; "a lean man of about forty, dark bearded, in an undyed wool burnous" does not.
Choose a Look, a Voice and a Reference sheet kind
The look sets the medium, the sheet kind sets what gets drawn, and the voice is what the studios reach for when this character speaks.
Add a photo, or draw from the description alone
Add a photo attaches a library image to design from. Draw a reference sheet renders one — optionally with an instruction like "make him older, grey the beard" to change what is already there.
Approve the one that is right
A rendered sheet is filed but not approved. This is deliberate: a bad draw that quietly became the face would follow you into everything made afterwards. Press Approve on the tile you want.
Put them in a photo
Choose a picture from your library, pick whole person, face only, or add to the scene, say who to replace when more than one person is in shot, and optionally point at a region of the frame. The result is saved as a new library file.
Archive rather than delete
Archiving takes a character out of the pickers without losing them. Deleting keeps their images in your asset library, and anything already made with that face keeps the pictures it was made from.
Options
- Looks — photoreal (the default), cinematic, anime, illustration, 3D render, comic.
- Reference sheets — turnaround (five views), expression grid, costume variants, single portrait.
- Voices — neutral, warm, bright, deep.
- Swap modes — whole person, face only, or add to the scene.
- Whereabouts — a three-by-three grid that says roughly where in the frame the character belongs, or anywhere.
- Archive — a toggle, plus a Show archived filter on the roster.
Limits
- 200 live characters per account. Archived ones do not count, which is what archiving is for.
- 8 reference images per character, of which 3 are handed to any one generation — the approved image first.
- 120 characters for a name, 2,000 for the description, 600 for a sheet instruction or a swap note, 200 for who to replace.
- Reference images must already be asset-library files: a photo picked from disk with the save box unticked has no id and is refused.
- A swap needs both a photo and a reference image on the member — without a face to copy there is nothing to swap in.
- A swapped photo is deliberately not attached to the member and cannot become its reference.
What it costs
Cast is a Max app. Defining a character is free; drawing one costs.
- Free — creating, naming, describing, setting look, voice and sheet kind, attaching an existing library image, approving, removing, archiving, deleting, and reading or editing the house style.
- Costs credits — Draw a reference sheet and Put them in a photo. Both are ordinary image generations, billed as image usage against the image model that actually ran, so they appear on your usage dashboard exactly like any other picture.
One honest warning: Cast does not quote a price before it renders. If you want the number first, the same image models are priced in Creator.
Frequently asked questions
Why is my rendered sheet not being used?
Because nothing is approved automatically. A sheet is filed beside your other references and stays unapproved until you press Approve — a bad draw that silently became the face would follow you into every later shot.
Can I upload a photo directly in Cast?
Not from this page. Reference images come from your asset library, so add the photo there first — through the picker with Also save to my asset library ticked, or from Creator.
How many references actually reach a generation?
Three, of the eight you may attach: the approved image first, then the rest in order, de-duplicated. More than three stops helping and starts confusing the model.
What is the difference between archiving and deleting?
Archiving hides a character from the pickers and frees a slot against the 200-member limit; they can come back. Deleting removes the member, but their images stay in your asset library.
Can I put a character into a photo that has several people in it?
Yes — say who to replace ("the woman in the red coat") and, if it helps, point at a region of the frame. It is not a masking tool; it is a description of who and roughly where.
Does the same character work in Film Studio and Game Studio?
That is the point of the library. Both read the approved image and the description from here, so a character cast once looks the same in everything made afterwards.