Merrimo User Guide › Cast and world

Manage cast members and characters on Mac

In Merrimo on your Mac, you can create character sheets, organize locations and props, store reference portraits, and maintain visual continuity across your story.

Create a new character profile

Describe someone in your own words, and Merrimo makes the character:

1. In Merrimo on your Mac, select Characters under Cast & World in the sidebar. When your story has no characters yet, the page asks Who's in your story?
2. Describe the person in the box, a real person or someone you've imagined, or click one of the starter ideas under it to fill the box with its words, then edit them.
3. Click Create. The new character is named from your description when it gives a name, and New Character when it doesn't. Your words become their appearance, and when an image engine is set up, a reference render starts in the character's style.

Start from photos

You can also start a character from photos of them, with or without words. Under the box:

• Take Photos… turns on your Mac's camera on the page and guides you through three angles: Front, Three-quarter and Profile. Click the shutter to take each one after a short countdown (choose its length, or Timer Off, in the camera's timer menu), or press Space to take it at once. Click a photo you've taken to take it again, or click Retake All. Click Use 3 Photos once all three are taken, or Done to add the ones you have; Cancel adds nothing. The first time, click Turn On Camera to let Merrimo use it. With no camera connected, the camera offers Choose Files… and Photos Library… instead.
• Photos Library… shows your Photos albums in a popover. Click photos in the order you want them (each shows its number), then click Add (it says how many). The first time, click Allow Access… to let Merrimo see your photos.
• Choose Files… picks image files on your Mac. You can also drag images onto the box.

A character keeps up to 6 photos: photos past that aren't added, and a note says so. The first photo is the main photo, marked MAIN. Click a photo to open it in the crop sheet, where you can crop and straighten it, and turn on Remove Background to cut the person out of the picture. The character's other photos are in a strip along the bottom of the sheet: click one to work on it next. Click Done to keep your changes, or Cancel to put the photos back as they were. To take a photo out, click its ×. While photos are still being added, Create reads Adding photos… and waits for them. Photos stay in this story and go only to the models you use for characters.

The description, written from your photos

Once photos are added, your AI model writes the description from them: the person's face, hair, eyes, apparent age and build, and their height when the photos show it, never their clothes, the setting, their pose or the photos' style. While it writes, the box shows Writing a description from your photos…; then its words fill the box, marked Written from your photos. You don't have to wait for it: click Create and the description goes to the new character when it's written. It is written again when you add, remove or crop a photo.

Your edits win. Once you've edited the description, or typed your own words, new photos never write over them. Instead, under the photos, Merrimo asks Your photos changed since you edited the description. (or Write the description from your photos? for words you typed): click Rewrite from Photos to have it written from the photos again, or Keep Mine to keep your words. If it can't be written (no AI model connected, for example), the reason shows under the words with Try Again. A character's description and its question work the same way in the inspector.

Likeness: Exact or Approximate

With photos, choose how closely the character's pictures follow them with Likeness, under the photos (and under the Photos row in the inspector):

• Exact (the default) keeps the face. Renders send the photos to the image model, the main photo first, followed by pictures of the outfit's garments, as many as the model takes; photos without a clear face aren't sent. The description the photos wrote folds to one row, Written from your photos with the age, build and height they can't show (for example "early thirties · slim · tall"): click Show in the box, or the arrow in the inspector, to read or edit it. Words you typed or edited are shown in full, and renders use all of them. Photos alone are enough for Create, and when an image engine is set up the character renders from them. While the photos are sent, the line under Generate in the inspector ends in from your photos.
• Approximate only writes the description from the photos: renders come from the words, shown in full with what they name picked out under them. Create needs a description, and says Add a description, or switch to Exact. until there is one.

When the image model can't take pictures, the Likeness row says This model can't use photos; renders come from the description., and Create needs words (Add a description, or switch to a model that can use photos., or in Approximate Add a description.).

Switching a character's Likeness, or changing their photos (adding, removing or cropping one, removing its background, or choosing another main photo), changes their likeness. Takes started before then (even one still rendering when it changed) are marked in the take strip, and the stage says The likeness has changed since this take. Click Re-render with current likeness to render a new take; the stage shows it when it lands. When the outfit has changed too, the stage offers Re-render with current outfit instead.

A character's photos

A character's photos are in the Photos row of the inspector's Entity tab. Click the + tile to add more (Take Photos…, Photos Library… or Choose Files…), or drop images on the row. Drag a photo onto another to move it there; the first is the main photo. Click a photo to open the crop sheet, or Control-click it for Crop…, Remove Background (Restore Background once it's removed), Make Main Photo and Remove Photo. A photo with a warning badge has no clear face: it's kept, but not sent for the likeness.

To add another character later, click New Character next to Characters in the Cast list. It opens a character whose page shows the same box: describe them and click Create, or give them a name and fill in their profile yourself. In the inspector you can fill in key profile details such as role, age, physical traits, hairstyle, eye color, and personality notes, or use the Generate button to render concept artwork.

An entity's memory

Every character, location and prop has a Memory: plain text that says who or what it is and what it has been through. Edit it in the inspector, under the gist; on iPhone and iPad, open its card on the World page and type into Memory. The Agent and Build Cast from Chapter add to it as the story goes, a sentence or two at a time. Writing help (ghost text, the Agent) reads all of it. A character's pictures are drawn from their appearance in Cast & World and their gist, never from their memory, so it can hold their secrets; a location's or prop's pictures are drawn from its memory.

Work with Cast & World

A story's characters, locations, props, outfits and wardrobe styles all live in its window's sidebar, under Cast & World: Characters, Locations, Props, Outfits and Styles, then the rest of the world (Biomes, Cultures, Factions, Lore and Systems). Variants sit under the one they belong to; to make one, Control-click a character, location or prop and choose New Variant. To fold an existing entry into another as one of its variants, drag it onto that character, location or prop in the sidebar: a name that starts with the other’s, such as “Bora (Spacesuit)” dropped on “Bora”, keeps only the variant’s part (“Spacesuit”), and its description, pictures and chapters come with it. An entry that has variants of its own can’t become one. Drag a variant onto its group’s row (Characters, Locations or Props) to make it a separate entry again. Undo puts a move back.

• Select a group, such as Locations, to see a card for each of its entries: its picture, its name and, for a variant, the name of the one it belongs to. Click a card to open it. The sidebar counts each group’s entries, and the inspector shows Pictures: how many have a picture, with Render Missing Pictures (see Build your story’s world).
• Select a character, location or prop to see its reference picture in the middle, with its takes in a strip below; hover a take to see the prompt it was rendered with. A new image made for it in the inspector's Image tab (Create, Edit or a camera move), or by the assistant in chat, joins the strip too. To remove a take, Control-click it and choose Delete Take. Edit > Undo (⌘Z) brings a deleted take back, and takes back Use as Character Image (or Location, or Prop). A character's take that no longer shows what they wear (they now wear another outfit, or the outfit's clothing has changed since) has a warning badge in the strip; select it to see The outfit has changed since this take. and Re-render with current outfit. Changing what a character wears doesn't change their character image, and pictures drawn from it keep its clothes, so use a take in the new outfit as the character image. To look closer at the large picture, pinch or ⌘-scroll to zoom, drag or scroll to move around, and double-click to zoom in at a spot or back out; while zoomed, the control at the bottom right zooms by steps and resets. To cut out the subject, Control-click the large picture and choose Remove Background: the cutout joins the strip as a new take and is selected, and if the take was the character's (location's, prop's) image, the cutout becomes the image. Edit > Undo takes it back out. Until it has takes, the middle shows the picture it uses, and you can drop an image on it. Show the inspector with the Inspector toolbar button: its Entity tab holds the character's, location's or prop's settings, then Appears In (the chapters it is tagged with), then Generation. The Image tab is the image workspace.
• To jump to one, press ⌘K and type its name, or type Outfits or Styles for those groups. On the canvas, a location or prop in a panel's composition tray and the Open in Cast & World button on a reference tile select it here, switching to Cast & World.

A character's, location's or prop's page on iPhone

On iPhone, tap an entry in Cast & World to open its page. Its whole picture comes first, edge to edge and never cropped, just below the back and ⋯ buttons; as you scroll, it slides under the bar at the top, which shows the entry's name.

• To look closer, pinch the picture with two fingers (up to 5×); once zoomed, drag with one finger to move around. Double-tap to zoom to 2× where you tap, and again to see the whole picture. While zoomed, the pill at the picture's bottom right says how far (“2×”); tap it to see the whole picture again. At the whole picture, one finger scrolls the page.
• Under the picture, the takes row shows each take, the one shown ringed, with “Take 1 of 2” and the shown take's seed and date beside them. Tap a take to show it; touch and hold one for Use as Picture, Render Again and Delete Take. Take, at the end of the row, renders another (until it can, why not shows beside it, such as “Describe the place first.”). While one renders, the picture says Generating (with how far it has got, when the image engine reports it) and a shimmering tile in the row has a stop button. A new take is shown as soon as it lands.
• Below come its settings as a plain list: Name, Variants (with the first variant's picture), the description, then each setting as a row with a large picture of the choice. Tap a row to choose from pictures. A location also lists its Characters: who its renders draw into the place, and where.
• With AI turned on, the Agent waits at the foot of the page: “Ask about Luis, or just talk”. Tap it to type, or tap or hold the microphone to talk. Whatever you say is about the entry on the page. Ask for a new take (“Closer, with a tired smile”) and it renders one, which is shown when it lands; it then offers Keep it, Try again and Back to take N. Ask it to change a setting (“Have him lean on the counter”) and the page scrolls to the row, which flashes, and a pill over the Agent says what changed (“Changed Pose to Leaning”), with Undo for a character's.

A variant whose description you leave empty is rendered from the description of the one it belongs to: the empty field shows that text in grey, and anything you type there replaces it for the variant alone. Its framing, outfit and studio settings stay its own.

Under a character's appearance, Picked out of your text shows a field for each thing the description names, in the order it names them: an age, an era, a build, a height, hair, eyes, or a colored thing such as a red scarf. Each field shows a photo of the choice (a swatch for a color) and its words. Click a field to open its choices over it, then type to search or pick a photo; click Custom… to type your own words. Drag an age or an era sideways to step it (early, mid, late thirties; a year at a time for "35 years old"; a decade for "1930s"), or press ↑ and ↓; hold ⌥ to take bigger steps, and press Esc during a drag to put it back. A pick rewrites those words in the description, everywhere they appear (a height written twice is one field), and Edit > Undo (⌘Z) puts them back. The photos show a man when the description calls the character he or him, and a woman otherwise.

A location's or a prop's description gets Picked out of your text too, with the fields that suit a place or a thing: an era ("1950s diner"), a colored thing, including two colors joined by "and" ("red-and-white rescue buoy", "red and white awning"), and what something is made of ("wooden lifeguard tower", "brick wall"). A material's choices show textures and an era's show a street corner of its time. Pick one and the description's words change; Edit > Undo puts them back. Ages and looks stay with characters.

Build Cast & World from a chapter

With AI on, Merrimo can read a chapter and fill Cast & World with the people, places and things in it, as completely as the text allows. Nothing is added until you confirm it, and no pictures are made.

1. In Prose, select the chapter, show the inspector with the Inspector toolbar button, and click the Cast tab. It lists what it fills and how many characters, locations and props Cast & World already has.
2. Click Build Cast from Chapter and the chapter's number. Merrimo reads the chapter a page at a time, and what it finds appears as cards while it reads.
3. A card shows what was found: a character's Traits (age, height, build, hair, eyes) and Outfit (the garments they wear), a Change to someone already in Cast & World that lasts (aged, scarred), a Memory line (what happens to a character in the chapter, which adding the card writes at the end of their memory), a place's Setting (time of day, weather, light), or who carries a prop. Its badge says what it is: New, New look (someone looking different for a while, such as soaked through on a storm night), New variant (a place or prop in another state, such as a market at night or a smashed compass) or Update. Someone or something only mentioned in passing is marked Minor and starts unticked.
4. When the chapter's clothing belongs to a period or kind of dress none of the story's wardrobe styles (or the ones Merrimo comes with) covers, such as a 1930s harbor crew or a guild's uniform, a Wardrobe Styles card proposes a New style, with its Era, Garments and Palette. A style the story already has is used instead, and a new one never takes the name of one it has.
5. Click a card's tick to leave it out or put it back. Then click Add to Cast & World (it says how many) to add the ticked cards, or Discard to drop them all. While it is still reading, Stop keeps what it has found so far.

A new character's appearance is written from its traits, so Picked out of your text offers them as fields, and its garments become an outfit it wears; a garment named like one in the story's wardrobe styles uses that garment. A new style is added to the story's wardrobe styles, without a cover picture, and the outfits added with it are built from its garments; untick it, and they use the story's existing styles instead. A place's or prop's description says only what a picture of it shows, since it is what its picture is made from. A new look or variant goes under the character, place or prop it belongs to, and something already in Cast & World is updated rather than added twice. Everything added lists the chapter under Appears In.

Render the pictures

After you add, the Cast tab lists what was added, each with No picture, and offers to draw them all.

1. Under Render Everything, choose Just added or All without pictures (every character, look, location, prop and their variants in Cast & World that has none). Each says how many it would draw.
2. Check the Engine and Style. They are the same ones every Generate uses, so changing them here changes them there, and the style becomes the story's style. A character is drawn as a full-body reference, and a location or prop at the size set in its own studio.
3. Click Render and the number of pictures, or Not Now to leave them for later.

The pictures are drawn one at a time. Each row says Done (with its new picture), Rendering… or Waiting, and the bar at the bottom shows how many have finished. A look is drawn in its own outfit, a variant as that variant. Each picture becomes that entry's image. Something that gets a picture another way before its turn is skipped. If one fails, its row says why and the rest carry on. You can keep writing, change tab or open another chapter while it runs. Stop keeps the pictures already made and draws no more. When it ends, click Done.

To draw a single group's missing pictures later, select the group in Cast & World and click Render Missing Pictures.

Make a location

A location is a place to set scenes in. In Cast & World you render empty shots of it, with the camera, setting and light you choose, and pick one as the location's picture.

1. In the sidebar, Control-click Locations and choose New Location, then type its name in the inspector's Name field.
2. Under Location, describe the place itself. Leave people out; they are added separately. Choose Interior or Exterior.
3. Set the Camera (Shot: Establishing, Wide, Corner of the room or Detail; Height; Lens; Focus) and Setting & Light (Time of day, Weather for an exterior, Atmosphere, Key light, Color). Click a field to pick from its presets, or type to search them. Custom… lets you write your own, and None clears it.
4. Under Generation, pick the shape of the picture (a landscape 4:3 by default), and click Render. Each render is an empty shot of the place and appears as a take under the large picture. Each new character, location or prop starts at a Seed of its own, and renders again from the same one until you type another or click the dice button (New seed) beside it.
5. Control-click the take you like in the strip and choose Use as Location Image. That picture is what panels use for the location.

Draw characters into a location

Open the Characters section to put people in the shot. Click + beside it and choose from your characters and variants. They are placed from left to right in the order listed; move them with the arrows, and for each one set Position (left, center or right; near or far), Pose and Expression. The button then reads Render with 2 characters (or however many). The whole shot is drawn again with the people in it, using their pictures as references. A character with no picture is described in words instead, and only the first 10 pictures are used; the section tells you when either happens. A take with people in it is marked with the number of characters. You can use any take, with or without people, as the location's image, or drag it onto a panel or the canvas.

Make a prop

A prop is one object, shot on its own.

1. Control-click Props in the sidebar and choose New Prop, then type its name in the inspector's Name field.
2. Under Prop, describe the object alone, without a scene around it.
3. Under Camera, choose a Shot: Insert (a tight detail), Studio (a clean product-style shot) or In use (as if in someone's hands), and a Lens. Add a Surface for it to rest on and a Light. The surface starts as a plain light-gray studio backdrop.
4. Click Render (a square picture by default), then Control-click the take you want in the strip and choose Use as Prop Image.

Props have no Characters section.

Show a location or prop from another angle

Under the large picture, the Views strip shows the angles you have taken of the selected location or prop, the ones being drawn, and unsuccessful custom views. Above it, Take a View… offers every angle: the built-in ones (Close-up, 45° right, 45° left, 90° right, 90° left, Reverse angle, Aerial, Wide angle and Low angle, each with an example photo), views shared across your story, and views you made for this one. The ones you already have are marked Taken.

1. Click Take a View… and click an angle (or type to narrow the list, then press Return). The angle joins the strip straight away, its name shimmering while it is drawn: the picture you chose is turned to that angle or, with no image yet, the angle is drawn from the description. Picking an angle that is already Taken shows it instead.
2. To take an angle of your own, type it in Take a View… (for example behind the counter). When no angle matches, the only choice is Take “behind the counter”: click it or press Return. The new view is named after your words and uses them to turn the picture.
3. Click a taken view to see it in the large picture's place, where you can zoom and pan it. This only shows it: the picture you chose stays the location's or prop's image. Click a take to go back to it.
4. To change a taken view, Control-click it and choose Rotate Again or Render Fresh (to draw it from the description). Rotate Again on a view of your own uses the same words. Control-click a view of your own and choose Delete to remove it. Choose Edit > Undo (⌘Z) to restore it.
5. If a view of your own fails or is canceled, its tile stays in the strip with Take failed or Canceled. Click it to read the explanation in the large picture’s place. Click Try Again there, or Control-click the tile and choose Try Again, to repeat the take with the same settings. Nothing retries by itself. You can also Control-click the tile and choose Delete, then undo that deletion with ⌘Z.

Choose a view on a panel

On a panel, click a location's or prop's reference tile in the Inspector. The card that opens has a View row of thumbnails: No view (the location's or prop's own image) first, then the drawn views, then the ones not drawn yet, dimmed. Click a thumbnail and the panel is rendered with that angle's picture. After choosing a view that has not been drawn yet, click Generate to draw it by rotating the image. This needs the location or prop to have an image first.

To start an Image Edit from one of the angles, choose it in the View row and click Use as base. The location's or prop's tile then leaves the strip: click the Base tile to change the angle from the same View row there. The edit starts from that angle's picture once it is drawn.

Place characters onto the canvas

Insert character storyboards directly into panels:

1. Drag a character card from the Cast sidebar directly into any comic panel on the canvas.
2. A character placeholder node is created, pre-configured with the character's visual tags and appearance prompts.
3. Type dialogue lines in the Inspector to immediately attach speech balloons to the placed character.