| --- |
| license: apache-2.0 |
| tags: |
| - minimax-h3 |
| - hailuo |
| - character-sheet |
| - reference-sheet |
| - turnaround |
| - comfyui |
| - prompt |
| language: |
| - en |
| --- |
| |
| # Character Sheets with MiniMax-H3 |
|
|
| **A prompt that turns a handful of reference photos into a clean 8-panel character sheet — angles on |
| top, detail close-ups underneath — in a single 5-frame generation.** |
|
|
| H3 is a video model, but it does not have to be used as one. Ask it for a *frozen* frame and it will |
| happily lay out a reference sheet for you. Five frames is the node minimum, which is about 0.2 |
| seconds of video, so this costs a fraction of a normal clip. Export any frame and that frame is your |
| sheet. |
|
|
| The sheet is not a piece of concept art. It is a **documentation sheet of a design you already have**: |
| the same object, from angles you do not have yet, on a neutral backdrop, at a consistent scale and |
| under consistent light. That is exactly what you need to feed back into image-to-video work, where |
| identity drift between shots is the usual problem. |
|
|
|  |
|
|
| Free to use, no strings. Take it, change it, share what you make with it. |
|
|
| ## Two examples, one prompt, zero edits |
|
|
| Both sheets below came out of the **same prompt text**. Nothing in it was changed between them — only |
| the five reference images in the slots. That is the point of the technique: the subject is never |
| described in words, so there is nothing to rewrite when you swap it. |
|
|
| ### Example 1 |
|
|
| Five references of one armour set — three full views and two close-ups: |
|
|
| | front | three-quarter | back | |
| |---|---|---| |
| |  |  |  | |
|
|
| | close-up, upper | close-up, lower | |
| |---|---| |
| |  |  | |
|
|
| Note there is **no side view among them**. The strict profile in panel 3 of the sheet is constructed |
| by the model from the views that do exist. |
|
|
| ### Example 2 |
|
|
| A completely different set — different silhouette, different palette, large burning wings, and a |
| figure with a different build. Same prompt, untouched. |
|
|
| | front | three-quarter | back | |
| |---|---|---| |
| |  |  |  | |
|
|
| | close-up, upper | close-up, lower | |
| |---|---| |
| |  |  | |
|
|
|  |
|
|
| Note how the wings, which exist only as a spread shape in the references, keep the same silhouette |
| across all four angles and are cropped out of the close-ups rather than being repeated in them. |
|
|
| ## What came out |
|
|
| Eight panels in two rows, in both cases. |
|
|
| **Top row, four full views:** front · three-quarter · strict side profile · back. Same scale, same |
| height, same camera distance, same light. Only the angle changes. |
|
|
| **Bottom row, four close-ups:** head and shoulders · chest and waist · arm and hand · leg and foot. |
| Each area appears once, shot straight on. |
|
|
| ## Settings |
|
|
| ``` |
| mode Ref2VA |
| length 5 frames (node minimum; 5 % 17 == 5, valid without padding) |
| resolution 1024 x 1024 (1.05 MP; H3's native canvas is a 768 short edge, so this is |
| slightly above it and still behaves) |
| ref_image_size max (2048 short edge — keeps fine engraving readable; slower, |
| because reference tokens ride through every sampling step) |
| sampler res_multistep |
| scheduler simple |
| steps 20 |
| guider BasicGuider (H3 weights are CFG-distilled, there is no negative prompt field) |
| ``` |
|
|
| Because there is no negative prompt path, **every constraint is written as prose inside the positive |
| text**. This matches MiniMax's own official ComfyUI templates, which end with lines like |
| `No text, subtitles, logos or watermarks of any kind`. |
|
|
| ## The prompt |
|
|
| Full text in [`prompt_character_sheet.txt`](prompt_character_sheet.txt). It follows the six-section |
| Ref2VA format from MiniMax's official rewrite guide: `subject_definitions` · `summary` · |
| `retention_analysis` · `detailed_description` · `overall_soundscape` · `non_diegetic_music`. |
|
|
| Three things in it do the heavy lifting. |
|
|
| **1. Take it as it is.** A block stating that every plate, strap, buckle, spike, colour and finish |
| keeps exactly what it has in the references, that nothing is redesigned, simplified, tidied, |
| embellished or improved, and that this is documentation of an existing design rather than a new one. |
|
|
| **2. A black mannequin instead of a wearer.** |
|
|
| > The subject is worn on a PLAIN MATTE BLACK MANNEQUIN: a featureless display figure of uniform flat |
| > black with no face, no eyes, no mouth, no hair, no skin texture, no visible seams and no joints, |
| > smooth and completely non-reflective, present only to hold the armour in its proper shape. |
|
|
| Without this the model invents a wearer, and that invented face is slightly different in every |
| panel — which defeats the entire point of a reference sheet. With it, wherever the armour leaves the |
| body open you get flat black instead of skin, and the panels finally agree with each other. |
|
|
| **3. Every panel named, and named as distinct.** Early runs produced two identical head crops and two |
| identical leg crops, because only two close-up references existed and the model simply repeated them. |
| Naming the four areas explicitly and stating that each appears once and none repeats another fixed it. |
|
|
| ## Making it your own |
|
|
| The prompt is written to be subject-agnostic. `<Subject 1>` is defined only as *the subject shown |
| across the reference images* — no colours, no materials, nothing that could contradict what the model |
| can already see in your photos. Swap the references and it works on a different armour set with no |
| edits at all. |
|
|
| For **mounts and vehicles**, delete the A-pose line. |
|
|
| For **weapons**, keep the top row and rename the bottom four crops to the parts that carry the |
| identity — grip, guard, blade, pommel. |
|
|
| For **characters**, drop the mannequin block and let the person be the subject; keep everything else. |
|
|
| For a **turnaround video** instead of a sheet — a slow full rotation on a neutral backdrop, from |
| which you pull full-resolution frames — the same approach works with the panel layout removed. That |
| gives you every angle at the full frame size rather than a quarter of it, at the cost of a real clip |
| instead of five frames. |
|
|
| ## Notes from the runs |
|
|
| - **Panel 3 first came out as a second three-quarter.** Writing *strict profile at exactly 90 degrees, |
| the far arm and far leg hidden behind the near ones, the face seen edge-on* fixed it. |
| - **Close-ups came out doubled** until each was named and declared distinct. |
| - **The invented wearer's face drifted between panels** until the mannequin replaced it. |
| - A grid layout is a known weak spot for video models — panels bleed into each other. The bans on |
| repeated panels, overlapping panels, tilted panels and panel drop-shadows are there for that reason, |
| and the composition is declared a frozen frame where every frame is identical to the first. |
|
|
| --- |
|
|
| A ComfyUI workflow is work in progress and will be added here. |
|
|
