Nowadays, many people use AI to generate images of people. To better control poses or outfits, they will definitely upload reference images for the AI to reference. However, you will more or less run into situations where you happen to not have suitable reference images on hand. This article recommends a very useful open-source project called Open Pose & Costume. It contains more than 5,800 reference images, covering all kinds of character poses, anime costumes, and even people from various countries. It not only supports local deployment but also offers an online version, so you can easily use it online.
In addition, it also provides an AI image generation tool. Once you have configured the API Key settings, you can directly import reference images and generate images within this tool.
Open Pose & Costume includes over 5,800 reference images covering characters, poses, and costumes, making AI image generation easier.
Open Pose & Costume is a free, open-source AI character creation reference tool that integrates three major asset libraries—character poses, costume combinations, and character appearances—so users can freely combine the character looks they want without spending a lot of time searching for reference images, and can even generate complete character images directly through AI. Whether you want to create realistic human-style characters, anime characters, or are a creator who needs specific poses and outfits, you can use this tool to quickly find suitable assets.
Its biggest feature is a remarkably rich image asset library. According to data released by the developer, it currently includes more than 5,800 reference images, including 312 sets of character poses, 2,769 outfits, and 1,527 character reference images. The pose assets cover standing poses, dance poses, model poses, and other types; some also offer different viewing angles such as front, side, top-down, and bottom-up, along with depth reference images, making it easier for users to capture character movements more precisely.
The clothing options are also quite extensive. In addition to everyday outfits and spring, summer, fall, and winter clothing, they include party looks and anime-style costumes. Users can also filter by category, keyword, character tag, and visual style, so they don’t have to browse through every image one by one. It also supports favorites, downloading original reference images, and sharing asset links. Even without using the AI image generation feature, it can serve as a reference library for drawing practice and character design.
Open Pose & Costume also integrates a “one-click image generation” feature. After setting up the API, simply select the character pose and costume first, then add character appearance references as needed, and you can combine different assets and let AI generate new images.
The only thing to note is that the licensing for the code and image assets differs; some self-created assets are for non-commercial use only. If you plan to use them in commercial works, be sure to check the relevant license terms first.
Key Features
- Free and open source: The project code is MIT-licensed, offers an online demo, and can also be self-hosted.
- Extensive asset library: Contains over 5,800 images, including character poses, clothing, and character appearances.
- Multi-angle pose reference: Some assets provide front, side, top-down, low-angle, oblique side, and depth views.
- A variety of clothing styles: Offers realistic human and anime outfits, with filtering by season, category, and style.
- Freely mix and match characters: combine poses, outfits, and character appearances, and upload your own reference images.
- AI one-click image generation: Once you set up a compatible image generation API, you can combine different reference materials into new images.
- Multiple image styles: supports natural photography, studio-quality looks, anime illustrations, and reference-style matching.
Go to the online version of Open Pose & Costume
After clicking the link above to go to Open Pose & Costume, the menu on the left contains the full categories: pose reference, costume reference, and character reference. It also supports favorites, and below that is one-click image generation:
After selecting a category, you can start browsing the reference images you want to find. For the pose reference images, if they are line drawings, each pose also offers multiple angles, which is quite nice:
Once inside the detail page, you can switch between options and also find reference descriptions and image download buttons:
A filter function is also provided. Within each reference image category, there are further subcategories; for example, under pose references, you can find standing, sitting, squatting, kneeling, and so on:
There are also more than 2,000 clothing reference images, with a wide variety of styles—from spring outfits and summer outfits to suits, everyday wear, and even party dresses:
And it’s not just realistic style—there are quite a few anime ones too:
With the filter feature, you can quickly find reference images that interest you:
The character section also has over a thousand reference images:
And it’s available in many countries. Interestingly, for some reason the vast majority are from Japan—as many as 1,501—while other countries have only a few, just 2 or 1:
Tons of reference images of Japanese characters, many of them female:
On the one-click image generation screen, you can configure the API in the image generation service settings in the upper right corner:
If you want to deploy it locally, you can go to GitHub projectGet the source code:
Source: KOCPC Chinese