FAQ
Frequently asked.
Quick answers across plans, mocap, projects, exports. Anything missing — ask in the community forum.
Credits
What are credits?
Credits are the meter behind every AI button in the editor — character split, variant generation, and layer regenerate. The credit cost is shown on each button before you click. You only pay for what you actually use; flat-rate "unlimited AI" pricing tends to either overcharge light users or quietly throttle heavy ones, so credits keep the deal honest in both directions.
What does each action cost?
Character split costs 8 credits. Variant generation and layer regenerate cost 2 credits each. The exact cost is always shown on the button before you click. If we ever change a price we'll surface the new number on the same button — no hidden updates.
How many credits do I get on each plan?
Free: 30/month. Pro: 500/month. Studio: 2,000 per seat per month, pooled across the team. Lifetime: 500/month. The dashboard's top card shows your current bucket, what's used this period, and the next reset date.
Do credits roll over?
Subscription credits don't roll over — they reset on your renewal date. Top-up credits never expire and stack on top of your subscription bucket, so anything you buy one-shot is yours to keep.
What happens if a generation fails?
Refunded automatically. The refund lands in your top-up bucket so it never expires. You'll see a green toast confirming the refund, and the recent-activity ledger in Settings shows the matching refund row.
What happens when I run out mid-project?
The button you clicked opens a top-up modal showing exactly how many credits you need vs. have, with packs from $5 (100 credits) up to $199 (6,000 credits, 33% off). Buy a pack, you land back in the editor with your work intact.
Auto top-up — what does it do?
Off by default. If you turn it on in Settings → Credits, then when you run out mid-generation we automatically purchase the pack you picked and continue. Disable any time. Charged to the card already on file via Polar — same as your subscription.
Can I see what I spent credits on?
Yes. Settings → Credits has a paginated activity log of every spend, refund, monthly reset, and top-up — with the date, action, bucket, and signed delta. If anything ever looks off, that ledger is the source of truth and the first thing we'll ask about in support.
Pricing & plans
Is there a free tier?
Yes. Free includes every editor feature; it's capped only at 3 active projects. No card required, no time limit.
What happens when I cancel?
Your projects stay accessible at the Free-plan limits. We never delete your data.
Can I switch monthly to yearly?
Yes. Switch any time from the billing page; we prorate the difference.
Do you offer student or nonprofit discounts?
Yes — email hello@charios.com from your institution address and we'll set it up.
Mocap & rigs
Can I use my own mocap?
Drag any humanoid .bvh (CMU / Truebones / Rokoko) or .fbx (Mixamo) onto the editor. The retargeter normalises bone lengths and extrapolates hands and feet automatically.
What clips ship out of the box?
13 bundled Mixamo presets — idle, walking, jumping, sword combos, magic attacks. They're available on every plan.
What's anim-check?
Toggle it on the Preview to play 9 clips at once on the same rig. The fastest way to spot a janky frame on Walking that's fine on Idle.
AI variants
What's a variant?
A full restyle of your character — same rig, same pose, same animation, totally different look. Click Generate in the Variants panel and you get five at once: Ice, Molten, Royal Gold, Shadow, Nature. Each card swaps every layer's texture in place; nothing about your bone setup or animations changes.
How long does a batch take?
About 30-60 seconds for the full set of five. The Gemini call is the slowest step (~17-35s per variant); after that, your browser cuts the background off the result with an on-device AI model and uploads the cleaned cells. Each card on the right rail shows you exactly where it is — Generating, then Cleaning, then ready.
Why does the editor stay smooth while variants run?
All the heavy work — the AI background-removal pass, edge slicing, thumbnail building — runs in a Web Worker, off the main UI thread. You can keep typing, scrolling, panning the canvas, even working on layer transforms while a batch generates. The first time you click Generate in a session, the model is warmed up while you're still picking styles.
What happens if a variant fails?
The credit gets auto-refunded if Gemini fails (you'll see a green refund toast). The half-baked card disappears from the panel — you only ever see variants that actually rendered, never broken ones. If something failed because you ran out of credits mid-batch, the top-up modal opens with the exact shortage and you land back here once you've topped up.
Editor & projects
How does layer-import work?
Drop a PNG. Charios cuts every alpha-island automatically; toggle which to keep, Shift-drag for custom rectangles. Each crop snaps to its nearest bone on confirm.
Is anything saved automatically?
Yes. Every commit (drag, scale, rotate, flip, snap, delete) debounces a save 1.2 s after the last edit. Multi-layer drops upload in parallel, and a fresh dashboard thumbnail is captured on every save.
What's smart-deform?
Linear-blend skinning baked per layer. Toggle it on Preview and your sprites bend with the rig instead of riding the bone like a billboard. Show-mesh is a separate toggle for the wireframe overlay.
Where do my projects live?
Project metadata + transforms in Postgres; PNG bytes on Cloudflare R2. Both scoped to your account via row-level security.
Licence & exports
Can I use this commercially?
Yes. Anything you create in Charios is yours — characters, exports, derivatives — to use however you want, including commercial work.
What about exports?
Per-frame PNG sequence + JSON layer state are next on the roadmap. Spritesheet export after that.
Account & support
How do I sign in?
Google One Tap from any page. No password to remember.
Where do I get help?
Ask in the Community forum, or email hello@charios.com.
Still stuck?
Ask the community.
Real workflows from real users. Faster than email when you're mid-edit.