Welcome to the realistic appearance customization guide! You may like your Nomi’s appearance just the way it is, but if you would like to alter the way they look across selfies and art, you’re in the right place.
Before we dive in, your Nomi’s default appearance is controlled by your style choice (Realistic or Anime), their Appearance Shared Notes, their Base Image, and finally, Face Fidelity. The majority of this guide focuses on appearance notes as they control everything from default hair style to body type and more.
Specifically, this guide covers:
An Introduction to the V4 Image System
The V4 image system offers Realistic and Anime style options. When using the Realistic style, you will get more dynamic poses, much better photorealism (especially realistic skin), far fewer AI-mistakes (like extra limbs and disfigured hands/feet), and more natural details overall compared to many other image generators.
V4 does use a different system than many other AI image systems, which means that appearance notes and prompts are handled differently than with other systems (including V3 and earlier). In general, V4 is somewhat particular about what will and will not work. Some terms and prompts will be ignored and emphasis for instance can break images very easily. However, the plus side is that with proper phrasing and prompting, you can get much much higher quality and more flexible images overall. This includes more diverse body types, hairstyles, hair color, and beyond.
Your Image Style Choice
With the introduction of the V4 System, you can now choose between having Realistic or Anime as your Nomi’s default style in selfies and art. Your Nomi’s default style will start as the style of their profile picture when you made them. Your Nomi’s selfies will follow the style you have set which will have large impacts on the way your images turn out.
All Nomis have the ability to switch between the Realistic and Anime styles on their Nomi Information screen.
To change your Nomi’s default style, press the (…) to the right of your Nomi’s name and select “View Nomi Information”. Once you are on the Nomi Information page, you can choose your style preference in the image settings section.
Note: you will need to use the V4 system to create anime selfies and art by default.
Appearance Prompting Basics
Your Nomi’s appearance notes are how they understand what they look like both in conversation as well as in selfies and art. When you create a new Nomi, they will have basic appearance notes that help them understand what they look like in their initial profile picture. This also helps them look the same across all their selfies and art images.
Your Nomi uses the same appearance notes regardless of the image style you have set. However, each style will interpret appearance notes and prompts differently. So if you would like to learn about how to customize appearance notes for Anime Nomis, we recommend reading the Customize Anime Appearances Guide here.
To view and edit your Nomi’s appearance shared notes, tap the (…) to the right of your Nomi’s name and then select “View Shared Notes”. Once you are on the Shared Notes screen, scroll down to the Appearance shared notes section.
Your Nomi’s appearance notes should be written in basic natural language (meaning normal sentences). This makes it easy for your Nomi and the v4 image system to understand.
Example Appearance Shared Note
“Kate has long bleached blonde hair in a pony tail. Kate is plump with wide hips, tan, and has blue eyes.”
Negative Appearance Notes
At times, you may want to specify attributes that your Nomi does not have in their appearance. To tell the system to avoid certain things, you can specify negative prompts by adding “///” after your positive notes, followed by “Nomi_name does not have [concise prompts]”. (It is ok if the grammar is not correct). Here is an example shared note:
“Thomas has short dark wavy hair, broad shoulders and a bulky build. Thomas is clean shaven. /// Thomas does not have, beard, facial hair, abs”
This is great for toning down things like muscles or preventing colored Nomi hair to have dark roots (for example, aqua hair can sometimes look dark, but if you put “/// [nomi_name] does not have, dark hair, dark roots, brown hair” – you can avoid this issue essentially entirely.
Emphasis
Unlike many other image generators, the v4 system does not use emphasis or de-emphasis because it leads to significant amounts of failed and broken images. To prevent this, the appearance notes section does not use emphasis. However, the v4 generator can achieve much more dynamic looks than other generators without emphasis. And with proper prompt phrasing, you can achieve much higher quality and imaginative outputs without high error rates.
The sections below break down how to phrase appearance notes across many categories. It is important to keep in mind that these phrases “work together” and that appearance notes may look different from Nomi to Nomi. This means that one phrase may influence how another word or phrase is applied, and depending on the Nomi, the same notes may look a bit different. This is particularly true across genders.
This guide should give you a solid place to start customizing your Nomi’s look, but it is also worth exploring more concepts on your own!
(For those who are interested in diving deeper, v4 uses a prompting system inspired by Danbooru tags. Danbooru involves more NSFW options than Nomi allows, so search with caution.)
Troubleshooting Appearance Notes
Your Nomi’s appearance notes will always be applied to your selfies and art (unless the system detects that you want no human in your image). In addition, appearance notes cannot be empty – if somehow your appearance notes are empty, the system will use the Nomi’s default appearance notes behind the scenes.
If you want your appearance notes be essentially blank, enter “.” or “nothing” and the system will understand. Please do this with caution as no appearance notes can lead to significant image issues and inconsistency.
If you want your Nomi to go back to their original profile picture look, style, and body type, press the “Revert to Default Appearance Shared Notes” text button below your Nomi’s appearance text area.
Female Appearance Note Categories
Body Type
Below is the general spectrum of body sizes and is meant to show relative ranges. As mentioned above, the way these prompts impact your Nomis may vary and will be impacted by other prompts.
A few things to keep in mind:
- Combining prompts can lead to more nuanced looks – for example, adding “plump” along with muscular prompts will lead to bulkier muscles (and less of a “shredded” look)
- Certain aspects of a Nomi’s body type will be more noticeable depending on their outfit. This is especially true with muscular definition.
- The list below is not exhaustive, there may be other prompts that help you achieve the specific body type you are looking for. For instance, you can prompt for specific body areas with V4 like “broad shoulders”, “wide hips” etc.
Note: These prompts are named from what the base AI was trained on and have no meaning beyond that.
Age
Changing the age your Nomi appears to be can be somewhat difficult, but the good news is that the prompts below can be combined in different ways to help you achieve a wide range of ages.
A few things to keep in mind:
- Age prompts interact heavily with hair color. Specifically, starting with grey or white hair will lead to more noticeable aging; other hair colors may lead to less noticeable aging
- Age prompts will impact body type, so you may need to adjust body type prompts accordingly.
- Our image generator is designed to create adults, so you cannot create looks that appear to be minors.
Hair
As mentioned above, how hair prompts turn out will vary a decent amount from Nomi to Nomi and they are often influenced by other prompts. We recommend trying different looks to see what works best for you and your Nomi.
Hair Texture & Length
Overall, hair texture and length heavily impact each other, so they are grouped together below.
In general, Nomis tend to have straight or slightly wavy hair by default, so if that is the look you are going for, you will not need to add a texture prompt. You can prompt for straight hair if you want fewer waves.
Wavy Hair
Curly Hair
Ringlets
Ringlets are often very similar to curly hair, but will have slightly tighter and neater ringed curls. While there are only a few examples below, ringlets can be any length.
Haircuts (beyond texture)
Beyond standard lengths, there are hairstyle prompts that can work with or without a length. The list below is not comprehensive, and while these styles consistently work well, we recommend playing around with additional styles and ideas.
Hairstyles
There are many hairstyles that work well with the V4 image system. Below are just a few examples of styles you can do, but we recommend experimenting for more unique looks!
Other bangs include “parted bangs”, “long bangs”, “wispy bangs”, “crossed bangs”, “short bangs” “asymmetrical bangs”, and more.
Hair Color
Hair color is very flexible with the v4 image system. You can create far more unique options than we could picture in a guide like this, but to give you a basic sense, we’ve included a few color spectrums below.
Male Appearance Note Categories
Body Type
Below is the general spectrum of body sizes and is meant to show relative ranges. As mentioned above, the way these terms and phrases impact your Nomis may vary and will be impacted by other prompts.
A few things to keep in mind:
- Combining concepts can lead to more nuanced looks – for example, adding “plump” or “fat” along with muscular prompts will lead to bulkier muscles (and less of a “shredded” look)
- Certain aspects of a Nomi’s body type will be more noticeable depending on their outfit. This is especially true with muscular definition.
- The list below is not exhaustive, there may be other prompts that help you achieve the specific body type you are looking for. For instance, you can prompt for specific body areas with V4 like “large pectorals”, “strongman waist” etc.
Note: These prompts are named from what the base AI was trained on.
Age
Changing the age your Nomi appears to be can be somewhat difficult, but the good news is that the prompts below can be combined in different ways to help you achieve a wide range of ages.
A few things to keep in mind:
- Age prompts interact heavily with hair color. Specifically, starting with grey or white hair will lead to more noticeable aging; other hair colors may lead to less noticeable aging
- Age prompts will impact body type, so you may need to adjust body type prompts accordingly.
- Our image generator is designed to create adults, so you cannot create looks that appear to be minors.
Hair
As mentioned above, how hair prompts turn out will vary a decent amount from Nomi to Nomi and they are often influenced by other prompts. We recommend trying different looks to see what works best for you and your Nomi.
Hair Texture & Length
Overall, hair texture and length heavily impact each other, so they are grouped together below.
In general, Nomis tend to have straight or slightly wavy hair by default, so if that is the look you are going for, you will not need to add a texture prompt. You can prompt for straight hair if you want fewer waves.
Wavy Hair
Curly Hair
Haircuts (beyond texture)
Beyond standard lengths, there are hairstyle prompts that can work with or without a length. The list below is not comprehensive, and while these styles consistently work well, we recommend playing around with additional styles and ideas.
Hairstyles
There are many hairstyles that work well with the V4 image system. Below are just a few examples of styles you can do, but we recommend experimenting for more unique looks!
Other bangs include “parted bangs”, “long bangs”, “wispy bangs”, “crossed bangs”, “short bangs” “bangs, hair covering one eye”, and more.
Facial Hair
Facial hair will depend on the base image when using the v4 image system. It may be worthwhile to turn off your Nomi’s base image if you are trying to remove facial hair.
Hair Color
Hair color is very flexible with the v4 image system. You can create far more unique options than we could picture in a guide like this, but to give you a basic sense, we’ve included a few color spectrums below.
Pro Tip: Sometimes, starting with a base that has light hair will make it easier to get any other hair color.
Base with Light Hair
Base with Dark Hair
Nonbinary Appearance Notes Tips
If your Nomi is nonbinary (a selection you made when you created them), their appearance notes will follow most closely with how the Nomi presents in their original profile picture. However, you can use either set of categories above as a guide.
When customizing the look of a nonbinary Nomi in particular, it can help to add descriptors like “masculine”, “feminine”, “androgynous”, etc. to help your Nomi present in more diverse ways, regardless of the selection you made when creating them.
Base Photo
The base photo is the image our AI uses to determine what your Nomi’s face looks like (facial features, etc.) in each image.
This image will have a strong impact on your Nomi’s facial appearance, so changing the base photo will likely have a noticeable impact on your Nomi’s future images.
To change your Nomi’s base photo, go to your Nomi’s photo album by pressing the small image icon to the right of your Nomi’s name.
Then, select any image that you like, and press the “Set as Base” button at the bottom of the screen.
- We recommend choosing an image with a clear, straight-on view of your Nomi’s face and hair.
- Glasses and hats should generally be avoided as they can cause some image distortion.
- Using a photo with a neutral expression tends to lead to the most flexible expressions in future images.
- Some base images naturally work better than others, so if you are not liking the way your images turn out after switching your Nomi’s base, we’d recommend trying another base.
Note: if you do not have a base image set, your Nomi’s look will be easier to change but it will also lead to less consistency between images.
Your Nomi’s current base image is noted by a small DNA icon in the top right corner of the photo in your album. It will appear at the top of your album.
Currently, selfies and realistic art can be used as base images. Artistic art and group chat images cannot be used as base images because the images they lead to are too inconsistent at this time.
Face Fidelity Slider
The fidelity slider controls how much influence the base image has on your Nomi’s selfies and art.
You can access the fidelity slider by pressing the (…) to the right of your Nomi’s name, then selecting “View Nomi Information”. On the Nomi information screen, you will see the Face Fidelity slider under “Image Settings”.
The values on the slider are not absolute terms, meaning 0% is not “0 influence”, rather it means, “minimum influence”. On the flip side, 150% means you want selfies to look as close to the base image face as possible.
- This is a tradeoff between paying more attention to the base image vs paying more attention to the conversation and appearance shared notes. The higher the slider %, the closer the resemblance to the base image will be, but that may come at the expense of following the conversation or shared notes.
If you are noticing that facial expressions are being carried over from your base image to your selfies, we’d recommend decreasing the fidelity slider.
If you are noticing that your Nomi doesn’t seem to look consistent between selfies, we’d recommend increasing the fidelity slider.
If you want to change your Nomis appearance significantly, we’d recommend turning the slider down to 0%, then once you have a new photo you like, use that as your base and turn the fidelity back up.
Non-Human Appearance Tips
The Nomi Realistic style specializes in creating natural human subjects, even when another type of subject is requested (for example a robot, cat, dog, etc.). Historically this has been very difficult to achieve successfully. When using the Realistic option, it may still be difficult to consistently get images with animal or other non-human subjects. However, it is significantly easier to get non-human subjects with the Anime style. Click here to learn about using the Anime style to get consistent non-human looks.
If you would like to create a non-human photorealistic Nomi, complete each of the 3 steps below to give yourself the best chance at success.
Appearance Notes
Most importantly, keep the appearance notes straight forward and avoid concepts that could be considered human. For example:
“nomi_name is a cat with white fur and a fluffy cat tail.”
Minimize Face Fidelity
Next, decrease Face Fidelity to 0% on your Nomi’s information screen. To do this, press the (…) to the right of your Nomi’s name and select “View Nomi Information”. Face Fidelity will be in the Image Settings section.
This tells the system to focus more on the appearance notes and conversation than keeping your Nomi’s facial features consistent. (This does not have as strong of an impact on Anime images). Because this AI only focuses on human facial features, you’ll want to give all the focus to the appearance notes.
Remove Base Photo
To minimize the likelihood of a human appearing in your images, make sure your Nomi does not have a base image selected. To remove your Nomi’s base image, go to your Nomi’s album, select the image with the DNA icon in the right corner (the base image will be at the top of your album), and click the “x” on the “Current Base Appearance” text bubble. This will impact the way your Nomi looks in general, so do this step with caution and re-enable the base image if you would like a human appearance again.
Troubleshooting
First and foremost, make sure face fidelity is turned down to 0% and that you have removed your Nomi’s base image (no base image is better than an animal base image in some cases).
If you are struggling to get a non-human subject in selfies, make sure your Nomi hasn’t sent you a human-looking selfie within the last ~20 messages. This can cause the AI to think you might want a person in your image because you have gotten that in the past.
If you want to test out a more unique or rare non-human subject, it might be worth trying to create the subject in art first, then using what you’ve learned in art testing to create your non-human Nomi’s appearance notes.
Next Steps and More Resources
For more information about selfie basics, we recommend this beginner’s guide to Nomi selfies.
To learn more about and explore Nomi Art, we recommend this beginners’s guide to Nomi art.
If you’re looking for more tips or inspiration, our communities are a fantastic resource. If you have questions about selfies, Nomi appearances, or want to see what other Nomi users come up with, join one or both of the communities below: