Selfie Avatars

Selfie Avatars is a experimental beta feature highlighting our latest avatar technology. This feature is available on both desktop and mobile devices for Starter and Creator plans. If you are on an Enterprise plan, reach out to your Synthesia sale representative to opt-in into the beta.

If you don't have a Synthesia account yet, go to synthesia.io/selfie to try it out.

Creating a Selfie Avatar

1. From the Synthesia app, navigate to the Selfie Avatars page from the navigation menu on the left.
2. Upload 5-20 photos of yourself. You'll also have the option to take photos of yourself via your device's camera from within the app.
   Supported formats are .jpg,.png, and .webm, and the file size limit is 10MB.
3. Click Continue to run a quality check on your photos and proceed to the next step.
4. Record yourself reading a consent script and passcode, since we'll need your consent to create an avatar using your photos.
5. After your images and consent recording have been processed, you'll be able to start prompting and generating Selfie Avatars.

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Important: A key requirement of the photos is that nobody else can appear in them.

Best practices for uploading photos

For best results, follow these guidelines:

• Use photos taken of you by other people.
• Include close-up and full body photos of yourself.
• Make sure that you're smiling with your teeth showing—the more photos of yourself smiling, the better! This will greatly improve the quality of the lip-sync in your avatars.
• Include photos of yourself from different angles.
• Include photos of yourself wearing a variety of different outfits.

In general, you'll want to include a diverse range of photos.

Prompting

Once you've submitted your photos and consent recording, you'll be able to start prompting and creating Selfie Avatars. Initially, you'll be presented with a standardized selection of avatars.

If you need help coming up with an idea, click on the lightbulb button for some inspiration:

Best practices for prompting

It helps to be fairly specific about the attire worn, scenery, style of the photo, time of day, lighting, framing, and time-period you're aiming for.

You can even include information about the type of film, camera, and processing used influence the style of the generated avatars.

For example:

androgynous person in a magical idyllic Elvish otherworld. they're dressed like a rugged ranger, in dark earth tones, with bracers and a travel-worn cloak, fastened with a silver Elven leaf-clasp brooch. 35mm film, vintage, soft natural light, film grain, warm color grading, soft focus, yellow cast.

Please note that results can be unpredictable—getting too specific can result in some unintended consequences. For example, a very wordy and specific prompt for a wizard in a subterranean monster's lair might land your wizard in the front of the Eiffel Tower.

Avatars

After generating your prompt, you'll be presented with 3 avatars:

Hover over any of the the avatars to download them as a static image, create a video, or click on the three-dot button to access the options menu.

From the options menu, you'll be able to:

• reuse, tweak, and perfect your prompt
• copy the avatar ID
• delete the avatar (deleting an avatar is permanent and irreversible)

Click on any of the avatars to:

• Save to My Avatars: click the top-leftmost button to save it as an avatar to use in your videos
• Access the options menu: click on the three-dot button at the top to either reuse your prompt, copy the avatar ID, or delete the avatar (deleting an avatar is permanent and irreversible)
• Create video: add a voiceover (10 second limit) and, optionally, download the result
• Download: download the static image

When you create a video directly from the Selfie Avatars page, it'll be added to your My videos page.

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Note: Some options and functionality are different on mobile devices.

• The mobile version of Selfie Avatars doesn't have the option Save to My Avatars.
• The Download button is a Share button instead.

Create video

When you click Create video, you'll be asked to record a 10 second voiceover to generate a video with.

Click the play button to preview your voiceover—you'll be able to record as many takes as you need to get it right. If your voiceover is under 10 seconds long, click the stop button to finish your recording.

Once you're satisfied, click Generate to create your video.

If you can't think of anything to say, click the lightbulb button for some inspiration:

For best results:

• use a high-quality microphone (but your device's built-in microphone will work just fine)
• record yourself in a quiet room where there is little to no echo
• speak clearly into the microphone