Animal/Creature Asset
Create a reusable animal or creature asset with angle, pose, variation, and motion sets, edited in the full-screen Creature Studio — or choose an existing creature from your Library or the Public Gallery.
Overview
The Animal/Creature node creates a persistent creature asset with a base image and multiple asset categories. Creatures can be viewed from different angles, rendered in different poses, generated as visual variations, and animated into motion clips. You can either build a new creature or bind the node to an existing one from your Library or the Public Gallery. Creatures are stored per-project in the database and can be referenced by downstream scene, image, and video nodes for consistent appearance across compositions.
Unlike the Object node, the creature’s Category / Species field is free text (not a fixed enum) — so mythical and hybrid creatures (e.g. “griffin”, “dragon”) are not locked to the built-in animal catalog. A 126-entry animal catalog powers autocomplete suggestions, but any value is accepted.
The full editing experience lives in the Creature Studio, a full-screen modal (opened from the node’s config panel) organized into a config-driven sidebar: Resources (References) · Identity (Appearance) · Composition (Angles, Poses) · Variants (Variations) · Motion · Character (Voice). The Voice page lets you browse, clone, or design a voice and preview it with a Talk panel; the chosen voice auto-fills a connected Text to Speech node (talking creatures). The creature node also exposes a plain image output handle (alongside the identity Creature handle) that connects to any image/reference input downstream.
The Canvas Node
Alongside the existing ⬡ Studio button, the Animal/Creature node shows a Choose existing button that opens the Asset Picker to bind the node to a creature you already have. Once a creature is bound, this button becomes Replace — use it to swap in a different creature.
Configuration
| Field | Type | Default | Description |
|---|---|---|---|
| Name | string | "" |
Creature name. |
| Species / Type | string (free text) | "" |
The animal or creature kind, e.g. red fox, griffin, dragon. Autocomplete suggests from the animal catalog but accepts any text. |
| Description | string | "" |
Detailed text description of the creature’s appearance and features. |
| Category | string (free text) | "" |
Free-text grouping (cats / dogs / wild / birds / sea / mythical / etc.). Distinct from Object’s hard category enum. |
| Style | enum | "realistic" |
Visual style. Options: realistic, anime, 3d-pixar, illustration. |
| Reference Image | image URL | "" |
Optional uploaded reference image to guide the creature’s appearance. |
| Style Lock | boolean | true |
When enabled, every variant generation passes the approved main image (plus the canonical description) as a reference, keeping form and species consistent across assets. |
| Choose from Library / Gallery | button (row) | — | Opens the Asset Picker to bind the node to an existing creature. Becomes Replace from Library / Gallery once a creature is bound — use it to swap in a different one. |
Asset Categories
| Category | Status Field | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Angles | anglesStatus |
Multiple viewing angles of the creature. |
| Poses | posesStatus |
The creature in different poses and stances. |
| Variations | variationsStatus |
Visual variations of the creature (color, age, markings, etc.). |
| Motion | motionStatus |
Short animated motion clips generated from the creature’s images. |
A canonical, LLM-authored description is set when the main image is approved; it anchors downstream generations when Style Lock is on.
Choosing an existing asset
Instead of building a new creature in the studio, you can bind the node to one you already have. Open the Asset Picker from either the Choose existing button on the canvas node or the Choose from Library / Gallery row in the config panel. The picker has two tabs:
- My Library — your own saved creatures.
- Public Gallery — creatures shared by the community. Selecting one clones it into your library first (you can’t reference another creator’s private asset), then binds the node to that fresh clone.
This works both for an empty node (first-time selection) and to replace a creature that’s already set — once a creature is bound, the buttons read Replace / Replace from Library / Gallery. Binding or replacing carries the full creature (main image plus every variation bucket — angles, poses, variations, and motion), so downstream nodes immediately use the new creature.
In two more cases the picker helps you avoid clutter:
- Already have a copy? If you pick a Public Gallery listing you’ve cloned before, the picker asks whether to use your existing copy or make a new copy — so a gallery pick never silently piles up duplicates.
- Delete from My Library. Hover a card in the My Library tab and click the trash icon to remove a saved asset. It’s archived (recoverable), and any nodes already using it keep working.
Inputs & Outputs
Inputs:
in— Optional text or image input for additional context.
Outputs:
creatureRef— Creature reference (identity) for use in scenes and compositions.image— The creature’s image as a plain image. Connect this anywhere a Generate Image output can go (image References, Image-to-Image, Generate Video image input, List columns, etc.). UnlikecreatureRef, it carries no identity injection — it is just the picture.
Credits
The creature node itself is a setup/reference node and does not bill credits to exist on the canvas. Generation inside the Creature Studio bills per the chosen provider, the same as the standalone generation nodes:
- Image assets (angles / poses / variations / main image) bill per the selected image provider (default
nano-banana, 1 credit). See Generate Image for the per-provider credit table. - Motion clips bill per the selected image-to-video provider (default
kling-turbo, 11 credits). See Image to Video for the per-provider credit table.
Best Practices
- Approve a strong main image first — it becomes the visual anchor for every other asset when Style Lock is on.
- Use the free-text Species field for precise prompting (e.g. “arctic fox with thick winter coat”) rather than relying on the category alone.
- Generate angles before poses and variations; angles give the most useful reference for downstream compositions.
- Use a reference image for creatures that need to match a specific look or an existing design.
Common Use Cases
- Creating recurring animal or creature characters for scene-based video compositions.
- Generating consistent multi-angle and multi-pose reference sheets for animation.
- Building a library of reusable creatures that survive across sessions and workflows.
- Producing motion clips of a creature for use in larger video assemblies.
Tips
- Creatures are persisted in the project database and survive across sessions.
- Custom variations can be generated with a free-text prompt beyond the standard angle/pose/variation categories.
- The
creatureRefoutput lets downstream nodes reference this creature consistently. - Style Lock (default on) trades a little creative variance for much stronger species/form consistency — turn it off when you want freer reinterpretation.