Maintaining consistent character appearances across different AI art scenes has been a major challenge for creators - until now. Midjourney has finally released its Character Reference feature, making it much easier to generate AI characters that look identical every time!

According to the official instructions, using this feature is easy: Just add --cref URL after the prompt, paste the link to the reference photo, and Midjourney will generate characters that look exactly like your reference!

This is a godsend for AI filmmakers, as one of the biggest challenges when using Midjourney with Runway to create AI movies has been maintaining consistent character appearances in different scenes. Some creators used plugins like InsightFace, or switched to Stable Diffusion with LoRA to solve this issue.

Table of Contents

• Table of Contents
• Using --cref and Celebrity Photos as Character References
• Adjusting Character Reference Strength for Better Result
• Creating Original AI Characters with Midjourney

Using --cref and Celebrity Photos as Character References

Disclaimer: I don’t hold the copyright to the celebrity photograph used in this tutorial. The image is solely intended for educational and demonstrative purposes within this tutorial context.

In this tutorial, I'll use Keanu Reeves as a character reference. I searched online for a clear front-view photo of him with good lighting, then right-clicked and copied the image link.

Next, I typed the prompt in Midjourney and pasted the photo link after it:

soft blur editorial shot of a model wearing white cat ears and a pink Lolita dress, riding a bicycle, in Japan street, city pop, neon light, in the style of Vogue --cref https://s.mj.run/iwx4o2Tk2dc --cw 5

Voila, here is a Keanu Reeves wearing cat ears in a style of city pop !

I bet you love Tom Holland’s version too😻

Adjusting Character Reference Strength for Better Result

Midjourney's default character strength is 100, meaning it will reference the face, hairstyle, and outfit of your character. If you only want the face and later change the outfit via the prompt, you can lower the weight to --cw 0.

Using our cat-eared Keanu as an example, with the default weight, the final image only shows the cat ears, but his outfit is still the same suit in the reference image:

editorial shot of a model wearing white cat ears and pink Lolita dress, white background, in the style of Vogue --cref https://s.mj.run/iwx4o2Tk2dc

When lowering the strength to --cw 5, a pink cat-eared Keanu in a lolita dress finally appears!

editorial shot of a model wearing white cat ears and pink Lolita dress, white background, in the style of Vogue --cref https://s.mj.run/iwx4o2Tk2dc --cw 5

Creating Original AI Characters with Midjourney

For those worried about portrait rights, you can design your own AI characters with Midjourney. The method is simple - refer to my prompt template:

full body editorial shot of a model standing, 20s Asian, looking directly at the camera, with a long side-swept ponytail, wearing nose ring, sport bra, long yellow plaid coat, and white denim shorts, wearing red socks and white Martin boots, white background, in the style of Vogue

In the prompt, set the age, ethnicity, facial features, hairstyle, and outfit, and you can generate an AI character:

Then right-click to copy that image link in Discord:

Add this link to a new prompt using the --cref URL. I tried putting this new character in Taipei, and wow, the same outfit looks great on them:

If you only want to reference the face, you can generate an AI portrait avatar like below, then combine it with different prompts to adjust outfits, hairstyles, etc…..

This is the same character in Taipei, wearing a raincoat, with strength set to --cw 10

Finally, here are Midjourney's official instructions for using Character Reference feature:

• Type -cref URL after your prompt with a URL to an image of a character
• You can use cw to modify reference 'strength' from 100 to 0
• Strength 100 (cw 100) is the default and uses the face, hair, and clothes
• At strength 0 (cw 0) it'll just focus on face (good for changing outfits/hair etc)

The prompt structures in this article are inspired by aihub.ai on Instagram, which shares many useful prompt tutorials. I also recommend following it!