Characters, locations, and assets for consistency

On the left side of the editor you'll find three tabs — Characters, Locations, and Assets (props). These are the reusable elements the whole film is built from:

• Characters — the people, creatures, and speaking roles in your story.
• Locations — the places scenes happen in, indoors or outdoors.
• Assets — the objects and props that matter (a sword, a lantern, a car).

Once something exists here, it can appear in as many shots as you like and always render as the same thing. You design it in one place instead of re-describing it in every scene — that single source of truth is what keeps your film visually consistent.

You can build a character, location, or asset three different ways:

• From your script (automatic). When runime reads your story it drafts the cast and places for you, filling in each one's details. You'll see a "Designing…" state on cards while the AI populates them.
• From a prompt. Click "Design character / location / asset", give it a name and a detailed description, and runime creates it.
• From a reference image (Create from an image). Upload a photo or drawing, box the subject, and the AI recreates it in your film's style. Use a clean image where the subject stands alone — no clutter or busy background — so the recreation stays faithful.

Each entity also holds structured details you can edit: for a character, things like age, build, hair, eyes, outfit, and mood — these are drawn straight into its character board, so correcting one really does change the pictures; for a location, its type, era, materials, atmosphere, and default time of day; for an asset, its materials, dimensions, and condition. The more of these you fill in, the more consistent every render will be.

Every entity has one canonical reference image — its hero. This is the single picture runime treats as the truth for what this character, place, or object looks like, and every shot in the film is generated from it. Getting a hero you're happy with is the most important step for consistency.

Open an entity to reveal its reference board:

• Characters: one wide character board — a model sheet showing the same character from the front, in three-quarter, from the side and from the back, all at the same scale on one line, plus a row of expression heads and a few accessory close-ups. It is drawn in a single pass from the character's description and the design fields you filled in, and the square picture on the character card is lifted straight out of it — so the card and the reference the AI works from are the same character, down to the pixel. Because all four angles come from one drawing, they can't disagree with each other, and no single view can quietly fall out of date.
• Locations: the same place relit across time of day (dawn, noon, dusk, night) and weather (clear, overcast, rain, fog), plus set-dressing props. Indoor locations vary by lighting (daylight, lamplight, dark) instead.
• Assets: extra angles, material and wear close-ups, and scale shots (in hand, on a surface).

These references are exactly what runime hands the AI for every shot — a back-facing shot no longer has to invent the back of a character's head, and a character who turns mid-clip has a real profile and back to turn to. Use "Generate all" to fill in everything that is still missing in one pass.

Your references stay editable, and runime protects consistency as you tweak them:

• Edit with a prompt. Ask for one change ("make the jacket red", "add a scar") and runime applies just that, keeping everything else about the hero the same.
• Takes and revert. Each regeneration is kept as a take. If a new version drifts, revert to an earlier one — reverting doesn't cost anything.
• Out of date. If a character's main image changes on its own — you upload one, edit it with a prompt, or take it from a 3D model — the character board is flagged "Out of date" and you redraw it whenever you want the two back in sync; nothing regenerates behind your back. Location and asset boards work the same way: change the hero and the views made from the old one are flagged, with a one-click refresh.
• Automatic locking. Once an entity is used in a rendered frame or video, it locks so it can't drift away from the shot that already used it. To change a locked entity, delete the frame that uses it first.

Because everything downstream is generated from these references, time spent getting a character, location, or asset right pays off across every shot it appears in.