DreamActor vs. Seedance 2.0: which is better for swapping characters in localized ads?

Use DreamActor M2.0 when only the character changes: it takes a character image plus your original ad as a driving video and transfers all motion onto the new face without regenerating anything. Use Seedance 2.0 when the localization also changes language, location, or on-screen UI — its reference-to-video mode regenerates the ad with the new cast while preserving structure.

Pick the model based on how much of the ad actually changes for the new market. invideo is an agentic video creation tool with all of these models available, so the invideo agent can route the same project to either one.

DreamActor M2.0 — motion transfer, nothing regenerated. You supply one character image and the original ad as the driving video; DreamActor maps every movement of the original actor onto the new character while the video's structure stays untouched. That makes it the faster, cheaper choice when the original environment, language, and on-screen text are already correct for the target market — a pure face swap. The same preservation is its limit: the original location, captions, and app screens all carry over, so it can't culturally adapt anything beyond the character.

Seedance 2.0 — full regeneration with references. Seedance 2.0 R2V animates a new version of the ad using a storyboard as keyframes, the base video for motion structure, the new character reference, and the target-language voiceover. In one documented localization, this preserved character identity — including skin tone in hands, feet, and close-ups — across every shot, while the workflow regenerated 4 reference sheets and 5 translated app UI screens per market and kept the original's 7 shot beats intact. Generate the storyboard with the new character before animating; skipping it risks skin-tone drift in close-ups and B-roll. Seedance 2.0 also has an EDIT mode that modifies the existing base video with a character reference — a middle path when you want more change than DreamActor allows but not a from-scratch regeneration.

The decision rule: most localizations need more than a face. New voiceover, translated UI text, and casting someone the market recognizes are what make the ad land — which is why documented multi-market runs (Japan, Spain, France, Nigeria) ran on Seedance 2.0 regeneration rather than motion transfer. Cost actuals for that route: $70 per ad across 6 localized ads in two markets, up to $145 (570 credits) per localization including the ~85% of clips rejected — call it $70–$150 per market depending on batching. Reserve DreamActor for the narrow case where the market shares the original ad's language and setting. To scale the Seedance route across markets in one pass, name each character reference file after its target language (Spanish.jpg, French.png) and the invideo agent assigns each character to the right ad automatically.

Watch some of these to see what works for you:

For a change this big, storyboard first. New face, new language means new frames — so I asked the Agent to generate the storyboard before animating. This is the step that keeps a big localization from drifting off-brand.

— invideo's creative team