📖 Stages Guide
Create stunning background environments for your characters
🎭 What is a Stage?
Stages are the environments and backgrounds where your characters come to life. Think of them as the settings for your story - a bustling city street, a peaceful forest clearing, a dramatic mountaintop, or a cozy bedroom.
With StableGen's Stages feature, you can:
- Transform reference images into stylized backgrounds
- Generate variations with different art styles, weather, and lighting
- Create atmospheric environments that match your creative vision
- Build a library of reusable stage backgrounds
➕ Step 1: Create Your Stage
Start by creating a new stage with basic information:
- Stage Name: Give your stage a descriptive name (e.g., "City Rooftop", "Forest Path", "Bedroom")
- Description: Describe the environment and important details you want preserved - things like architectural style, natural features, color palette, or atmosphere
- Source Images: Upload 1-3 reference images that show the environment or location
💡 Best Source Images: Use images that clearly show the overall composition and spatial layout. Good stage references have clear depth, interesting visual elements, and define the mood you're aiming for. Photos, screenshots from games/films, or artwork all work great!
🤖 Step 2: AI Stage Analysis
After you create your stage and upload source images, StableGen automatically analyzes your images and generates a detailed environment description. This helps ensure consistent visual elements when generating stage variations.
The autogenerated description includes details like:
- Architectural and environmental features
- Color palette and visual style
- Spatial composition and depth
- Atmospheric qualities and mood
📝 Note: You can view and edit this autogenerated description on your stage's page. The description is automatically updated whenever you add or remove source images.
⚙️ Step 3: Customize Your Stage Generation
StableGen uses a 5-component system to create exactly the atmospheric environment you need:
Art Style
- Unchanged (preserve original)
- Pixel Art
- Oil Painting
- Watercolor
- Sketch/Line Art
- Photorealistic
- And more!
Time of Day
- Dawn/Sunrise
- Morning
- Noon/Midday
- Afternoon
- Dusk/Sunset
- Night
- Unchanged
Weather
- Clear/Sunny
- Cloudy/Overcast
- Rain/Storm
- Snow
- Fog/Mist
- Unchanged
Mood
- Peaceful/Calm
- Energetic/Lively
- Mysterious/Eerie
- Dramatic/Epic
- Cozy/Intimate
- Unchanged
Lighting
- Soft: cool, neutral, warm
- Hard: cool, neutral, warm
🎨 Mix & Match: Combine different options to create unique atmospheres - try a pixel art forest at dawn with fog, or a watercolor city at night with dramatic lighting!
⚡ Step 4: Generate Your Stage Assets
Ready to create your stage variations? Here's how:
- Go to your stage's page
- Choose one option from each of the 5 categories (Art Style, Time of Day, Weather, Mood, Lighting)
- Select your AI model:
- 🌱 Seedream 4.0 - Recommended for style changes and artistic variations
- 🍌 Gemini Flash 2.5 Image Preview - Great for photorealistic results
- Click "Generate Asset"
- Wait a few minutes for the AI to work its magic
- Your new stage asset will appear automatically on the page
⏱️ Note: Stage asset generation typically takes 2-5 minutes per asset. Generate one asset at a time for best results!
✏️ Step 5: Editing Stage Assets
Need to refine your stage? StableGen offers powerful editing tools:
🖼️ Canvas Editing
Best for: Compositing characters into stages, adding elements, creative modifications
- Layer your characters: Combine stage backgrounds with character assets
- Add details: Paint or sketch additional environmental elements
- Text overlays: Add titles or UI elements for game mockups
- AI enhancement: Send your composite to AI for polishing
📚 Want to learn more? Check out our Image Editing Guide for detailed tutorials on all editing tools!
⌨️ Prompt-Based Editing
Best for: Style adjustments, adding/removing environmental elements
- Find the stage asset you want to edit and click "Editor"
- Write a natural language prompt describing your changes (e.g., "Add cherry blossom trees", "Make the lighting more dramatic", "Add a red sunset")
- Optionally upload a reference image
- Select your AI model
- Click "Edit with AI"
🎨 Precision Mask Inpainting
Best for: Fixing specific areas, replacing elements, surgical edits
- Open the asset in the Editor
- Switch to the "Mask Inpainting" tab
- Paint over areas you want to regenerate
- Describe what should appear in those areas
- Click "Inpaint Masked Areas"
🔄 Version History: Every edit creates a new asset linked to the original, so you can explore different variations without losing your work!
💡 Best Practices
Get the most out of Stages with these tips:
- Clear Composition: Use reference images with clear depth and spatial layout
- Consistent Elements: If you want certain elements preserved, mention them in your stage description
- Lighting Matters: The lighting setting can dramatically change the mood - experiment!
- Style + Time + Weather: These three settings work together powerfully - a watercolor dawn with fog creates a very different feel than pixel art noon with clear skies
- Build a Library: Create multiple stages for different scenes in your project
- Reference Quality: Higher resolution source images (at least 512x512px) produce better results
- Combine with Characters: Use the canvas editor to composite your character assets onto stage backgrounds
🎬 Creative Use Cases
Here are some creative ways to use Stages:
- Visual Novels: Create different times of day and weather conditions for the same location
- Game Development: Generate background variations for different game states or seasons
- Video Production: Quickly visualize different scenes and atmospheres
- Concept Art: Explore different artistic treatments of the same environment
- Comics/Manga: Create consistent backgrounds in different styles (realistic, sketch, ink)
- Character Showcases: Generate atmospheric backgrounds to display your characters in context