Create your own custom avatar

Create a custom avatar in Anam Lab or through the API. Preserve a prepared source image without cropping or outpainting.

Upload a photo or use your camera, then test your avatar in a live conversation.

Anam’s one-shot avatar generator creates a personalized avatar from a single photo of a real person, a stock photo, or an AI-generated image with compatible facial features.

To change an existing avatar with prompts and reference images, see Avatar personalization.

Every plan, including Free, supports unlimited saved custom avatars in the Lab and through the API. Image-generation, moderation and creation limits still apply.

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Before you create

• Use a .png, .jpg/.jpeg, or .webp image up to 4.5MB.
• Use a square image at least 1152x1152, with the face in focus and hands out of view.
• Leave clear space around the head, shoulders, and upper chest for landscape and portrait crops.

See Custom avatar best practices for complete source image guidance.

Create a custom avatar

Upload a photo or take one with your camera in Anam Lab.

View avatar examples

Browse the avatars available for your personas.

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Create in Anam Lab

1. Open the Build page

   Go to the Avatar tab in Anam Lab and select Add.

2. Add a new avatar

   Click the Add button, then either upload a photo or capture one with your webcam. For best results, follow the custom avatar best practices.

3. Generate

   Click Create and wait for your avatar to be generated. Once ready, it’s available for use in any persona.

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Create via API

For programmatic avatar creation, use the Create Avatar endpoint. This is useful for building custom onboarding flows or batch-creating avatars.

const response = await fetch("https://api.anam.ai/v1/avatars", {
  method: "POST",
  headers: {
    "Content-Type": "application/json",
    Authorization: `Bearer ${apiKey}`,
  },
  body: JSON.stringify({
    displayName: "My Custom Avatar",
    imageUrl: "https://example.com/photo.jpg",
  }),
});

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Preserve your source image

Set imageProcessing to "preserve" when you want to use a prepared image without resizing, cropping, padding, outpainting or alignment/refinement. This option is API-only and is not available in Anam Lab. The default, "auto", applies normal image processing.

Prepare an image that meets all of these requirements:

• Exactly 1152×1152 pixels.
• A static, 8-bit RGB or RGBA PNG, up to 4.5 MB.
• Fully opaque, including every alpha value in an RGBA image.
• No EXIF metadata or animation. Animated PNGs are rejected.

Use a supported Cara 4 creation model: cara-4, cara-4.1-express or cara-4-latest. Do not combine imageProcessing: "preserve" with zoomOutPercent.

curl --fail-with-body https://api.anam.ai/v1/avatars \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $ANAM_API_KEY" \
  -F 'displayName=My character' \
  -F 'imageProcessing=preserve' \
  -F 'imageFile=@character.png;type=image/png'

You can also send imageProcessing: "preserve" in a JSON request with imageUrl. Images that do not meet the requirements are rejected rather than converted.

Moderation, creation limits and facial compatibility checks still apply. Illustrated characters may work, but compatibility and animation quality depend on how human-like their facial features are. Preserve mode does not guarantee support for every character design.

The source stays unchanged, but animation frames can change. Retrieve the square source through sourceImageUrl. The imageUrl field returns the landscape still. Generated video still uses the normal landscape or portrait framing; preserve mode does not change those output crops.

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Using your avatar

Once created, reference the avatar by its ID in your persona configuration:

const personaConfig = {
  name: "My Persona",
  avatarId: "your-custom-avatar-id",
  avatarModel: "cara-4",
  voiceId: "de23e340-1416-4dd8-977d-065a7ca11697",
  llmId: "a7cf662c-2ace-4de1-a21e-ef0fbf144bb7",
  systemPrompt: "You are a helpful assistant.",
};

You can find the avatar ID in Lab by clicking the three-dot menu on any avatar and selecting Copy ID.

Create a custom avatar

Upload a photo or use your camera, then test your avatar in a live conversation.