Custom Avatar
Upload one photo of yourself and VidRush builds a reusable AI presenter from it. Your custom avatar works anywhere a VidRush avatar does: pick it in the prompt window, give it a voice, and it presents your videos to camera.
This is the option when your own face is the brand. Founders, creators, and coaches who want to appear on screen without filming every video no longer have to pick from the VidRush set.
Custom avatars are private to your workspace. Nobody outside it can see or use them.
If you would rather film yourself, see Talking Head. For the published VidRush presenters, see AI Avatar.
Custom Avatar is rolling out gradually, by workspace and then by plan. If you do not see it yet, it is not enabled on your account.
How to create a custom avatar
- Open My Avatars and click Create avatar.
- Choose Custom avatar rather than Preset Avatars.
- Name it. This is your own label for the avatar.
- Name the variation and describe its background. A custom avatar has one look, so this is the label and background description for that single variation.
- Upload one photo. The requirements are shown before you pick a file. Your photo is checked for usability and previewed before anything is built.
- Pick a voice from the full Voice Selection library.
- Choose Basic or Advanced. They differ in cost, build time, and how much the avatar moves.
- Click create.
Your avatar builds in the background. It takes around 5 to 10 minutes, and you do not have to wait on it. Leave the page, keep working, and you are notified when it is ready. Once it is, it appears in your avatar library and is selectable in the prompt window like any preset avatar.
Everything after the selection works exactly as it normally does: prompt field, reasoning effort, Quote Statement, and editor. Nothing about using a custom avatar is different from using a VidRush one.
Basic or Advanced
| Basic | Advanced | |
|---|---|---|
| Movement | Reduced gesture variation, largely front-facing | Full range of gesture and motion |
| Build time | Faster | Longer |
| Cost | Lower | Higher |
Basic is the sensible default if you are trying the feature out. Advanced is worth it once you know the avatar is going on your main channel, because a presenter that barely moves reads as stiff over a long video.
Photo requirements
Your avatar’s quality is decided at the upload step. A weak photo cannot be rescued by the build, so the requirements are shown before you pick a file, and a photo that is refused tells you which rule it broke.
| Check | What passes |
|---|---|
| One subject | Exactly one person, head and shoulders in frame, nothing cut off at the edges |
| Facing camera | Looking at the lens, head upright, eyes open. No profile view or steep tilt |
| Face visible | Nothing across the face. Clear glasses and hats are fine; sunglasses, masks, hands, and hair over the face are not |
| Expression | Neutral, or a light closed-mouth smile |
| Focus and light | Sharp and in focus, face evenly lit. No motion blur, hard shadow across the face, or strong backlight |
| Resolution | A reasonably high-resolution photo, with the face taking up a good part of the frame. A modern phone photo taken close up is fine; a distant crop from a group shot is not |
| Unedited | The original photo. No beauty filters, heavy retouching, stickers, or text over the face, and not an AI-generated or cartoon image |
| File | JPG, PNG, or HEIC, up to 10 MB. Portrait or square framing preferred |
The check repairs what it can, including rotation, cropping and mild exposure, rather than refusing. It only turns down what it cannot fix, and it tells you which rule failed so you know what to change.
The single biggest improvement you can make is a plain, well-lit, straight-on photo taken close up with a modern phone. Filters and retouching are the most common reason a photo is refused, and the fix is simply to upload the original.
How many you get
Every plan includes a number of custom avatars. Beyond that, each one costs credits.
| Plan | Included free | Basic | Advanced |
|---|---|---|---|
| Starter | 1 basic | 500 credits | 1,350 credits |
| Creator | 1 basic | 650 | 1,700 |
| Pro | 1 basic + 1 advanced | 700 | 1,900 |
| Scale | 2 basic + 1 advanced | 700 | 1,900 |
| Studio | 3 basic + 1 advanced | 750 | 2,000 |
| Enterprise | 3 basic + 1 advanced | 950 | 2,550 |
The included avatars are a one-time allowance, not a monthly one. They do not refresh with your billing cycle, and deleting an avatar does not give you the slot back. Change plan and your remaining allowance moves with you.
Before you commit to a build, VidRush shows you what is left of your allowance and what this avatar will cost. You always know whether it is included or charged before you start, not after.
Credits are reserved when the build starts and committed when it succeeds. If a build fails, the charge is released and you can try again. See Credits & Billing.
A failed build currently still consumes one of your included free slots. A fix is on the way, but until it ships, a free-slot attempt that fails costs you that slot.
While it builds, and if it fails
Your avatar library shows avatars that are in progress and avatars that failed, not only finished ones.
| State | What it means |
|---|---|
| In progress | Building. Not selectable in the prompt window yet |
| Ready | Usable anywhere a preset avatar is |
| Failed | The build did not produce a usable avatar. Retry from the library |
An unfinished avatar cannot be attached to a project, so there is no way to start a video against an avatar that is not there yet. Closing the dialog, or leaving VidRush entirely, does not interrupt a build.
If a build stops responding rather than failing outright, it is reported as failed rather than sitting in progress forever.
What Custom Avatar cannot do
- Use more than one photo. One photo per avatar. Reference videos and multi-photo uploads are not supported.
- Build more than one variation. A custom avatar has a single look. You name the variation and describe its background once at creation, and cannot add alternative variations to the same avatar afterwards.
- Replace the photo later. The name and the photo are fixed once the avatar is created. The voice can be changed at any time.
- Be shared outside your workspace. Custom avatars cannot be shared with another workspace or published into the public catalog. They cannot be moved between workspaces either, and support cannot transfer them. See Workspaces & Team Management.
- Speak German or Spanish. Avatar videos are English only, the same as preset avatars. See Multi-Language.
- Escape the avatar content rules. A custom avatar is held to exactly the same stricter standard as a preset one. See Input Validation.
Good to know
- A custom avatar is an avatar in every other respect. Same credit cost on the finished video, same single-presenter rule, same Deep Video v1 Pro requirement, same Brand Profile styling around it. See AI Avatar.
- Uploading someone else means having their permission. If the face in the photo is not yours, make sure you have the right to use their likeness before you upload.
- Your photo is personal data and is kept inside your workspace. It is not reachable by anyone outside it.
- A refused photo costs nothing. Credits are only reserved once a build actually starts, so a photo turned down at the upload step never touches your balance.
- Deleting an avatar does not affect videos you already made with it. Finished videos keep their presenter. What you lose is the ability to make new videos with that avatar, plus the slot it used, which does not come back.
- The avatar is a presenter, not a performer. It delivers narration to camera. It does not demonstrate, gesture at things on screen, or react.
- Plan your allowance before you spend it. Because the included avatars never refresh and a deletion does not return a slot, it is worth getting the photo right on the first attempt rather than burning a free slot on a test.