Portraits & Images

Story Bible can hold pictures of your story's people and places. Characters get portraits, and Worldbuilding elements get images. Both work the same way: upload pictures you already have, generate new ones right in Sudowrite, or mix the two. This article covers character portraits first, then what's different about Worldbuilding images.

Character portraits help you visualize your story's cast, and serve as your canonical reference for what each character looks like. Each character card in Story Bible can hold its own gallery of images, with one portrait chosen as the thumbnail that appears beside the character's name when the card is collapsed.

You can upload images you already have, generate portraits directly in Sudowrite, or use a combination of both. Keep multiple portraits to explore different looks, outfits, and art styles as you develop your cast.

Portraits live at the top of each character card in the Characters section of Story Bible, above the written traits that describe your character.

When you generate a portrait, Sudowrite uses the character's existing Physical Description as reference. There's no need to copy those details into a separate image prompt. You can generate a portrait using what's already on the card, tweak the Physical Description before doing so, or add a few words to guide a particular image generation.

Scroll to the Characters section of your Story Bible and expand the character card you'd like to add an image to. You'll see an empty box under Portraits, which you can click to create their first portrait. Or if the character already has portraits, click the plus (+) tile to add more.

The portrait window that appears has two tabs in the upper right: Generate and Upload.

Choose Upload in the upper right, then drag images into the upload area or click Drop or click to select images to choose files from your computer, and click Save. You can add up to 10 images at a time (PNG, JPEG, WebP, or GIF, up to 10MB each). Uploaded images become part of that character's portrait gallery, and if the character doesn't have a thumbnail yet, the first image you upload becomes it.

Each style you select produces one portrait. Results appear above the description box and are saved to the character's gallery automatically. Look for Saved to gallery. Hover over a result to see which style made it.

Generated portraits don't become the thumbnail on their own. To use one as the character's primary portrait, hover over it, click its three-dot menu (•••), and choose Set thumbnail. You can change the thumbnail any time. Portraits you don't pick stay in the gallery, and you can delete any you don't want.

Click + Style to open the style picker. There are four built-in portrait styles, each shown with an example:

Painterly is selected by default. Select one style to generate a single portrait, or select up to four to compare different interpretations of your character. Selecting all four generates four portraits at once—one in each style. To drop a style, click its pill.

You can also deselect every style. With no preset selected, the description box becomes your art direction, so describe the look you want there. Leaving it totally blank will technically work, too: Sudowrite will lean entirely on your character's traits to generate a single portrait (in an altogether unimpressive "none" style).

Use the description box to guide clothing, props, expression, pose, or setting. Generated portraits use a head-and-shoulders (bust) composition for consistency. The box accepts up to 2,500 characters, and a counter appears as you near the limit.

You only need to add the details you want to guide. For example:

With no preset style selected, you can also describe a visual treatment, such as "black-and-white pencil drawing," or "vibrant multicolor graphic novel with thick line work."

A reference image shows Sudowrite what your character looks like. Use one when you have a photo or piece of art that captures them, or when you want a character's face to stay consistent across new outfits, scenes, and styles. One of their existing portraits makes a great reference.

In the Generate view, click the image square to the left of the description box (or drag an image onto it) to add your reference. PNG, JPEG, and WebP files up to 10MB work. No extra instructions needed: Sudowrite takes the face, skin tone, hair, and distinguishing features from your image, without copying it exactly. While a reference image is attached, it stands in for the card's Physical Description, so the picture and the text don't compete.

Then add anything else you want in the description box—an outfit, a mood, a setting—choose your styles, and click Generate. To remove the reference, click the × on its corner.

Use Upload when you want to add an existing image directly to the gallery. Use a reference image when you want that image to guide a new portrait.

The thumbnail is your character's primary portrait. It appears beside their name when you collapse the character card, making it easier to recognize Characters at a glance.

You can set it right after generation from a result's three-dot menu (•••) by choosing Set thumbnail. To change it later:

Choosing a different thumbnail keeps the other portraits in the gallery.

While a portrait is open, click the i button in the lower left to see the style and description it was generated with.

Open the portrait from the character's gallery, click the red trash icon at the top of the window, and confirm Remove from gallery. You can also hover over any image in the card's gallery and click its trash icon. If you delete the current thumbnail, the most recent remaining portrait takes its place.

Portrait generation uses 5,000 credits per image. Generating one portrait uses 5,000 credits; generating all four styles at once uses 20,000 credits. You aren't charged for an image that fails to generate.

Worldbuilding elements can have image galleries too: the settings, items, lore, organizations, and everything else in your Story Bible's Worldbuilding section. They work just like character portraits. You can generate or upload, keep a gallery, and pick a thumbnail. Here's what's different.

Expand any element in the Worldbuilding section of Story Bible. Images live in the Images field at the top of the card. Click the empty box (or the + tile) to open the image window, which has the same Generate and Upload tabs as portraits.

Sudowrite draws on the whole element card: its name, Type, other names, and the fields you've filled in. It also reads your Story Bible's genre, style, braindump, and synopsis to match the mood of your story. Anything you type in the description box (time of day, weather, or a viewpoint, for example) takes priority when it conflicts with the card.

A few things Worldbuilding images leave out:

Worldbuilding has its own set of seven styles:

Which ones you're offered depends on the element's Type (the dropdown beside its name). The Type also sets the image's shape: wide (3:2) for scenes, square for objects and symbols. The first style listed is selected by default.

Elements with a custom Type (or no Type) get all seven styles, with a starting style based on the Type's name. A Type with "map" in it starts on Cartographic Map, for example. If you change an element's Type, the styles and shape update for your next generation.

As with portraits, you can select up to four styles at once and get one image per style. One difference: for worldbuilding, the description box steers what's in the picture, not the art style, so keep at least one style selected.

Uploads, thumbnails, the details panel, and deleting all work just as they do for character portraits, and collapsed elements show their thumbnail beside the name. Reference images work too. For Worldbuilding, Sudowrite takes the overall layout, architecture, terrain, and materials from your reference rather than a face.

Worldbuilding images cost the same as portraits: 5,000 credits per image.