Image reference

The single biggest lever for professional fidelity. Bind a reference image to a 3D object and the visualizer locks the rendered look across every shot – the same character, vehicle, or product, consis

The most important step a user takes for brand-true, professionally controlled output.

What is an image reference?

An image reference in Intangible is a photograph attached to a specific 3D object in your scene. The visualizer locks the rendered appearance of that object to the photograph at render time, so the rendered output is the actual thing in the picture rather than the model's generic interpretation. For agency work this is non-negotiable: a 2024 Bronco needs to render as a 2024 Bronco, a Lululemon storefront as a Lululemon storefront, an iPhone-and-not-a-generic-phone as the SKU you're advertising.

If you take one workflow away from these docs, take this one.

A greyboxed Adirondack chair in Build mode before any reference image is attached, sitting on a clean studio grid

Image Reference vs LoRA vs Custom Style

Three different ways to lock visual consistency in Intangible. They serve different jobs.

	Image Reference	LoRA	Custom Style
Scope	One specific object	One object, model-level bias	Whole render, every shot
Controls	What this object looks like	A learned style or character bias	Project-wide brand treatment
Setup	Drop in a photo	Train or download .safetensors or .pt	Upload references in Visualize, save
Best for	Brand-true product, hero with photos	Illustrator style, internal aesthetic, characters without photos	Brand- or campaign-wide look
Cross-shot consistency	Yes, automatic	Varies with training	Yes, automatic
Plan requirement	All plans	All plans	All plans
Reach first when	Almost always start here	Can't capture the look in a single photo	The style is bigger than any one object

For most agency briefs, Image Reference is the first reach. The other two layer on top when the job needs them. See LoRAs and Custom styles for the deeper coverage.

Why this is the headline lever

A diffusion model handed a text description of a chair generates a chair. A diffusion model handed an image of the actual rattan-and-teak chair the agency is pitching renders that chair. The first is sometimes useful, the second is always.

Reference images are how you give the model the visual truth of a specific object on a per-object basis. Three production cases this unlocks:

• Branded assets and products with custom geometry. Logos, store fronts, uniquely shaped products, deeptech hardware – anything the model can't be expected to know without a picture. The reference image is what closes the gap from "looks like the brief" to "is the brief".
• Cross-shot character consistency. A hero with a reference image renders the same face, costume, and silhouette across every shot in the project. Without reference, the model treats each generation as independent and the character drifts.
• CAD plus hero photo. Bring the client's actual CAD as the 3D mass via Smart Import. Attach a hero photograph as the image reference. The model gets both: structural truth from the mesh, surface truth from the photo.

Four ways to get one onto an object

1. Through the Object Details panel (manual)

Select the object in the viewport. The Details panel docks on the left side of Build mode. Scroll to the Reference images section and click Upload or Add from Media Library. JPEG and PNG accepted. Quality beats quantity: one excellent image of the most important or most bespoke component does more for the render than a dozen mediocre angles. The models also have practical ceilings on how many references they weigh – GPT Image handles around 20, while Nano Banana taps out around 8–12.

Object Details panel docked on the left after a reference image has been attached. The Reference images section shows the attached image's thumbnail beside the object's name and description fields

2. Through the AI Composer (conversational)

The fastest path. Type a sentence into the AI Composer prompt input at the bottom of Build mode:

Attach this as a reference image to the chair: <image URL>

The composer finds the matching object in the scene and attaches the reference. The Build-mode viewport doesn't preview the reference itself – the object stays greyboxed, picking up a base color at most. The reference resolves at render time, in Visualize. The chat confirms the attach so you know it landed.

AI Composer Chat History on the right showing the user prompt "Attach this as a reference image to the chair: <URL>" and the AI's response acknowledging the chair entity, with the chair still greyboxed

The same scene a moment later: the chair shows a base green color in the viewport, and the AI Composer chat confirms "The reference image has been attached to the Adirondack Chair in your scene". The viewport shows the color, not the rendered reference, which resolves at render time

The conversational path is the right reach for any object you can describe ("the red couch", "the lamborghini") or any object you've selected before typing.

3. Generate one in Studio

When the object is invented rather than real, there's nothing to photograph and nothing in the client's brand folder to pull from. Rather than build a reference sheet in an external tool and upload it, generate it in place.

Select the element, then click Generate in the Reference images row of the Details panel. The Generate Reference Sheet dialog opens with a single Prompt field, asking you to describe the character or subject for the reference sheet. There's no model picker and no settings, because the job is narrow: describe the thing, get a reference sheet back.

Write what the thing is, plainly. "the US space shuttle" and "a green tiled kitchen island" are both the right shape of prompt: they name the subject and leave the rest alone.

Generating a reference image from a prompt and attaching it to the selected object

Describe whatever the object needs to look like. It doesn't have to be a character or a turnaround sheet: "a green tiled kitchen island" is a perfectly good prompt, and what comes back is an image of that.

A Reference image generated toast confirms it, and the result attaches to the selected element immediately. It also lands in the team media library marked Generated and keeps the prompt that produced it, so a teammate can see where it came from and generate a variant from the same starting point.

Generating costs credits, the same as any other generation. See Credits and tokens.

Describe the thing, not a mood. "Orange tree" is thin enough that the model fills the gaps for you. "Orange tree, mature, heavy fruit load, gnarled trunk" gets you the tree you meant. The same specificity that makes a good prompt anywhere else applies here.

Generated references are ordinary references once they land. Everything below about what attaches do, what overrides what, and how many to attach applies to them unchanged.

4. Paste from the clipboard

Copy an image to the clipboard, select the object, and paste with Ctrl V / ⌘ V. It uploads, attaches to the selection as a reference, and lands in the media library – the same path as clicking Upload. The Upload button's tooltip says as much: Upload Images (or paste from clipboard). The Details panel doesn't need focus; pasting with the viewport focused works.

Paste several images at once and all of them attach. Only images are picked up; anything else on the clipboard is left alone. Let one paste finish before starting the next – a paste that arrives while an upload is still in flight is ignored.

References on a group or a set

A reference doesn't have to attach to a single object. Attach one to a group or a set and it anchors the whole collection to a subject and a style: make this room, object, or collection look and feel like this.

Attaching a reference image to a grouped set, then rendering: the generated image picks up the direction from the reference

The reference stays attached through the work. Save the group as a set, copy it, paste it, or reuse it in another project later, and the style direction travels with it rather than being something you re-explain each time.

Reach for a group reference when:

• The look belongs to the collection, not the object. A material language or visual mood covering a whole set piece, rather than one chair in it.
• A reusable set has to stay consistent across projects. The reference is part of the set, so it arrives with it.
• The style is easier to show than to describe. Attaching an image beats rewriting the same paragraph of prompt on every render.

Reference sheets are built per group and per entity, so a set can carry its overall direction while individual objects inside it keep their own specifics.

A worked example: attach a reference image to a dining-room set, then generate. The visual direction is baked into the set instead of being re-argued in the prompt every time.

Attach one from the Outliner: select the group, open Edit Details, and use the Reference images section there.

What attaches actually do

The visualizer's auto-prompt picks up references at prompt-build time. The Subjects block of the prompt mentions that the object has a reference image; the model receives both the prompt text and the image at generation. See How the visualizer thinks for the deeper flow.

What overrides what

Three layers stack, each overriding the one below:

1. The 3D object – the base. Its geometry and position are the source of truth for shape and placement.
2. The image reference – sits on top of the geometry and defines what the object's surface looks like.
3. The final prompt – wins over both.

The catch is that the object's name feeds the final prompt. Name an object "Gulfstream G550" and the model reaches for its own idea of a G550 and overrides the livery you attached as a reference. Keep the name – and any prompt text – generic ("private jet", not "Gulfstream G550") so the reference image is what defines the look. This is the most common reason a reference seems like it "isn't being applied".

When to reach for it

The signal is consistent: a generation has the right composition but the wrong specifics.

• Right place, wrong car. The vehicle is positioned correctly, the angle is right, the environment is right – but it's a generic mid-sized SUV instead of the actual model in the brief.
• Right pose, drifting face. The character is at the right scale and the right pose, but the face is changing shot-to-shot.
• Right product silhouette, generic surface. The shape and proportion are right, but the materials, finishes, or branding are off.

Re-prompting won't fix any of these. The model isn't being given the spatial truth, it's being asked to invent one. Attach the reference and the next render comes back resolved.

Tips that level up the result

Vanilla object names beat descriptive ones for character consistency. "Mark" and "Jeff" hold their look across renders better than "pirate captain" and "British sailor", because descriptive names pull the model toward generic interpretation and away from the specific reference image. The webinar covers this directly around the 18-minute mark.

Multi-view references give better mesh-aware results. Front, three-quarter, and side photographs of the same object produce more consistent renders than a single photograph from one angle. Use the multi-image slot when you have them.

Build mode doesn't preview the reference. Attaching a reference doesn't repaint the greyboxed object to look like the photo. The viewport may show a base color, but the reference itself only resolves at render time in Visualize. Don't wait for the viewport to "look right" before generating – attach the reference, then render to see it applied.

For imported CAD, pick reference images that match the shots you plan to render. Mix close-ups with the camera angles you expect in the final video. A reference set heavy on macro detail won't help the model on a wide tracking pass; a set of only side profiles falls apart on a three-quarter render. Pick the photos you're confident will appear on screen.

A render you like can become a reference. Download a strong Intangible render, crop the component you want to lock in an external editor like Photoshop, and attach the crop as an image reference – or as a custom style – to hem the model in on the next pass.

Limits

• Image reference doesn't override composition. A reference image of a car doesn't tell the model where to put the car – the 3D scene does. Reference is for what the object looks like, not where it goes.
• Model fidelity to references varies. Some image models are tuned for reference-image conditioning; older video models honor references less tightly. See Models for which models in the current working set honor references most tightly. If a reference seems to be ignored, try a different image model first; if the result is still off, the reference may need to be sharper.
• Sub-megapixel images are fine; multi-megapixel adds nothing. Every image reference is downsampled to a 720 × 1024 sheet before the visualizer hands it to the model, regardless of source size. A clean 1024 × 1024 file and a 4000 × 4000 file land at the same effective resolution. If an object has multiple reference images attached, they're consolidated onto a single 720 × 1024 sheet at the same step (front, three-quarter, and side angles composited together rather than passed in separately).

Further viewing

Phil walks through image reference in the AI You Can Direct webinar (55 minutes; the pirate-scene segment around the 18-minute mark covers reference images directly).

Related

• Object details – manual attachment via the Details panel.
• AI Composer – conversational attachment via natural language.
• How the visualizer thinks – how attachments reach the prompt.
• Smart Import – CAD + reference image is the canonical client-product workflow.
• Generate 3D Asset – generates the mesh from the same reference image.
• LoRAs – the alternative when a fine-tuned model is required.