An avatar is a character the models already know. Instead of describing a person from scratch every time and getting someone slightly different in each picture, you pick an avatar and get the same character every time.
That consistency is the whole point. Describing “a woman with dark hair” gives you a different woman in every image. An avatar gives you her, repeatedly, across as many pictures as you like.
Apex Image needs one
This is the part worth knowing early: Apex Image, the flagship image model, does not run until you have an avatar connected. Select it without one and it says so, and offers to connect one.
So an avatar is not a refinement you get to later — it is the thing that unlocks the best image model. Everything else (Apex Video, Apex img2img, Apex Edit, Apex Upscale, the partner models) works without one.
Using one
Pick an avatar in the making panel, then write your prompt as usual — describing the scene, the lighting and the treatment, not the person.
The avatar supplies who is in the picture. Your prompt supplies everything else. This is why prompts get shorter and better once you are working with one: you stop spending words on a description that never quite lands and spend them on the parts you actually care about.
Everything in writing a prompt still applies, minus the subject.
Presets
Avatars come with presets — ready-made looks and settings that suit that character. Apply one as a starting point and change whatever you like; a preset sets the controls, it does not lock them.
Where avatars come from
Two ways to have one:
- Claim an avatar you already have a connection to. See claiming an avatar.
- Train your own from photographs. See training an avatar.
An avatar you claimed or trained is yours: it appears in your own list and other people are not generating with it.
What an avatar is not
- Not a photograph of a real person you can generate at will. What you may make of whom is governed by the terms in the app.
- Not a style. An avatar is who is in the picture. The look, the medium and the mood still come from your prompt and your model choice.
- Not required. Everything works without one. Avatars solve the specific problem of keeping a character consistent.