How do you create a character reference sheet for AI video without training a LoRA?

You create a character reference sheet without a LoRA by casting the character in still images first, generating a multi-angle turnaround — front, side, back, plus face and mid-angle close-ups at 4K — then locking the best version into a persistent agent context that attaches it to every video generation. One documented production locked each character in about 5 generations at ~$9.78 per character.

A character sheet works as a LoRA substitute because it gives the video model a frozen visual identity to condition on every time, instead of retraining weights once: you generate and freeze the character as images first, then animate. One documented 70-second short film kept 2 characters visually identical across every scene this way — character sheets plus agent context, no fine-tuning, $750 total over 2 days. invideo is an agentic video creation tool with all the current image and video models available, so this whole pipeline runs in one place. The workflow:

1. Cast the character in stills before touching video. Generate portrait options with an image model and pick your character the way you'd pick an actor. Recraft is the strong choice for photoreal faces — "ReCraft actually gives you those imperfections like pores, lines, stubble, like all the little stuff that makes a face look like an actual face" — with GPT-Image-2 and Nano Banana available for stylized or animated looks. Generate several candidates per character: one production generated 4 options per asset and selected the best before any video generation; another ran the identical character prompt on two image models in parallel and picked the preferred aesthetic.

2. Generate the multi-angle turnaround sheet from the locked portrait. Remove any objects from the character's hands first — held props create inconsistency across turnaround angles. Then generate the sheet: front, side, and back views plus a face close-up and a mid-angle close-up; one documented session built sheets with 4 angles at 4K maximum resolution in Nano Banana 2, and Nano Banana Pro outperforms Nano Banana 2 specifically for character sheet fidelity. Include close-up panels, not just wide views — small details like scars and accessories drift first if the model never sees them clearly. If you already have a 3D model of the character, rendered front/side/profile/back poses work as the sheet directly. For complex multi-character arrangements no model can compose from text, a hand-drawn sketch of the configuration uploaded as reference gets the image model to the correct fused sheet.

3. Lock the sheet into persistent context. Upload the final sheet to the invideo agent and tell it explicitly to save the character to context for all further generations — from then on every shot inherits the identity without re-describing it. Budget roughly 5 generation attempts to finalize one character, about $9.78 each at documented rates; one 2-person production covered 4 characters and 1 prop with just 11 reference images total.

4. Attach the sheet to every video generation. The sheet only prevents drift if it rides along on 100% of prompts — the model hallucinates whatever it can't see, so the character must always be visible to it exactly as the sheet defines. Where model choice matters: Seedance 2.0 reference-to-video accepts character sheets directly as conditioning input, and the invideo agent routes each shot to Seedance 2.0, Kling, or Veo with your references attached, so you never pick a platform per model. In one 3-minute animated episode, every single prompt carried the character references, and that discipline held 2 characters consistent across 164 generated clips.

5. Make a new sheet for each appearance change. If your character gains accessories, changes costume, or evolves visually across the story, create a distinct per-beat sheet for each state — one production needed a separate sheet per sequence because the character added a new trinket in every location. If a continuity error surfaces later, fix it in the sheet rather than re-rolling shots: the invideo agent can identify the exact panel containing the error, correct it, and store the updated sheet so all subsequent shots inherit the fix.

Watch some of these to see what works for you:

Seventy seconds. Two characters. The same person across every scene. No LoRA needed.

— invideo's creative team