Create a holiday host avatar once: prompt, profile or photo, $0.95

You make a reusable host avatar on Sume with one job that costs $0.95. Describe the person in a prompt, give structured traits as a profile, or supply a reference photo, then reuse the avatar_handle in every holiday ad.

The avatar is a workspace resource. You pay for it once, and then each clip is billed per second by quality tier. For a campaign with 30 clips, the $0.95 is a rounding error.

Three inputs, one route

The Create new avatar docs list the three input methods. The route is POST /v1/avatar-1.0/generate, with a top-level avatar_handle and an input union. The handle can start with @, and Sume stores it without the @. Each request creates a job, so you poll it, and then you use the handle or the resource id in the video call.

A photo request

Here is the photo variant. The image must be a fetchable public HTTPS URL. Sume rejects localhost, private-network, non-HTTPS URLs and non-image responses before it submits.

curl -X POST https://api.sume.com/v1/avatar-1.0/generate \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $SUME_API_KEY" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -H "Idempotency-Key: avatar-host-001" \
  -d '{
    "avatar_handle": "holiday_host",
    "input": {
      "type": "photo",
      "image_url": "https://example.com/host.png"
    }
  }'

Consent, handles and the first clip

Photo input needs consent. Use a photo of a person who has agreed to be the face of your ads, and keep that agreement on file. A prompt or a profile avoids the question, since the avatar is not a real person. Whichever you choose, tell viewers where your platform or local rules require it that the host is synthetic.

Pick a stable handle with a name your team will recognize, such as holiday_host. The overview docs recommend a stable handle so that your app or agent does not depend on a generated id. If the handle is used by an automation, treat it as an API name and do not rename it mid-campaign.

After creation, poll GET /v1/jobs/{id}/status, read the result, and list your avatars with GET /v1/avatar-1.0/avatars. Then try one 10-second clip on the standard tier, at $0.184 per second or $1.84, before you queue a batch.

Cast the season

Plan the cast before the season. One host for offers, one for support answers, one for product demos. Three avatars cost $2.85. Each one can carry the full set of clips for its job, and your viewers see a consistent face. And remember the limit of the current execution: one resolved avatar per final video. A two-person ad is two clips and an edit.

Choosing the input and previewing the result

Which input should you choose? Use a prompt when you want speed and a fresh face with no consent question. Use a profile when you need a few fixed traits, for instance a host in a certain age range, and want repeat runs to stay near the same description. Use a photo when the face has to match a specific person who agreed to it, such as a founder who fronts the sale.

Whatever you pick, preview before you commit to a batch. Avatar video previews let you look at a first frame before the full clip is rendered, and you can regenerate the preview if the look is off. That is the cheapest place to catch a face you do not like, since you have not yet paid for the seconds.

Then record the handle, the input type and the date in your campaign notes. If someone asks in January why the host looks the way it does, the note answers it, and the same handle can be reused for the next season without creating a new avatar.

What the first clip costs

Budget the avatar as part of the first clip. For a 10-second standard-tier clip, the avatar is $0.95 and the video is $1.84, so the first ad is $2.79. Every later clip with that handle is only the per-second charge. If you create ten avatars to find one you like, that is $9.50, so use the preview step, not creation, to explore.