Settings and prompt style

Set every setting on every job, and write the prompt as plain prose. The model has no seed, so the prompt and the references carry everything.

What you attach. Only approved anchors, the client's material, human-made style references and a designer's drawing you were given. Never a near-miss, a frame from a take, or any storyboard or presentation image, in any role (decided). Attach the style anchor and each character's approved design to every later still, never the last still you made (decided). Each image gets one sentence saying what it owns and what to ignore. The rules' home is Photoreal anchors (Nano Banana Pro) → Settings and references.

Batches. Stills follow the generation rhythm: one candidate per asset first, then your review of the whole batch, then the rest (see Planning, budgets and takes → The generation rhythm). Price each batch and get the estimate approved first. Keep only candidates that pass the full-size check (see Photoreal anchors (Nano Banana Pro) → The full-size check).

Prompt style. Seedream reads natural prose. Its maker allows about 3,000 characters and advises under 600 English words [official guidance]. Keep to plain, compact sentences [best available, not yet validated], under about 2,000 characters, and about 80–200 words for simple jobs [best available, not yet validated]. The maker documents no fixed order, so you write this Guide's order as prose. Every item of the still-prompt list is required, in this model's form (decided; see Still prompts, storyboard frames and diagrams → The still-prompt structure):

1. The result and its purpose, in one sentence: what the image is, its use, the composition, the aspect.

2. The references, named by what they show, never by number ("the approved style anchor of the cart seller owns the painting style only") [official guidance]. Each says what it owns and what to ignore.

3. The style sentence: the nine construction descriptors (see Stylised films (Seedream 5.0 Pro) → The style anchor), then the style lock: every person, object and surface is drawn in this medium, nothing photographic.

4. The content in the still order, for plates and frames: context, subject, environment, camera, composition and edges, light, palette, surface, atmosphere, processing, delivery. Sheets carry only subject, layout, palette lock and flat light.

5. One short exclusion line at the end, naming instances only.

Writing rules

• Each prompt stands alone, with no "as above".

• The rules every still prompt keeps (no quality tags, no real names, the light rule, the palette) are in Still prompts, storyboard frames and diagrams → The still-prompt structure. For Seedream, a drawn material never gives off light unless it is a source, and you write the time of day and the palette in words every time, because a reference's palette can win.

• A design lock for every drawn face: name the structures that must match (head shape and its width to height, eye construction and spacing, nose and mouth shapes, hair shapes, silhouette, marks, colours), say to keep them exactly as in the approved design, and forbid widening, slimming, ageing, redrawing or averaging. The model sometimes widens faces.

• No camera brands, film-stock names or director names. Write the film's lens family as its visible result, and only where the treatment sets one.

Sources

• ByteDance's Seedream 5.0 Pro prompting guide, via Runware (references by content, the length limits); Higgsfield's catalogue entry for the settings.