The Borrowed Orbit

DENIZ AKKABAK · SEEDANCE 2.5 TUTORIAL · @DENIZ.AKKABAK

MADE IN INVIDEO · invideo.io/i/DENIZ-ig

The Borrowed Orbit

Turn one finished video into a camera template — Seedance 2.5 runs the same 360° move around your pet, inside your room, from three references.

A TUTORIAL BY DENIZ AKKABAK · @DENIZ.AKKABAK

PIPELINE SEEDANCE 2.5 · VIDEO-TO-VIDEO · FORMAT 7S · 9:16 · GENRE PET PORTRAIT

Every pet owner wants the same impossible shot: a camera that starts inside the whiskers, whips backwards, dives under the coffee table and circles the animal at floor level before landing back on the eyes. Nobody can shoot that in a living room with a real cat — the cat leaves, the lens hits the sofa, the light changes. So don't shoot it. Borrow it.

Seedance 2.5 can treat a finished video as a camera master. Given a clip, it will keep the move, the timing and the animal's blocking, and rebuild everything else — the animal from one photograph, the room from another. That turns the shot you are watching above into a template: attach it as @Video 1, add a front-facing photo of your own cat or dog, add a photo of any room you like, paste the prompt, and the same orbit runs again around your animal, in your space, in seven seconds.

THE PIPELINE AT A GLANCE

1. 01

   Three references

   The clip above as @Video 1 (camera, timing, blocking), a front-facing photo of your pet as @Image 1 (identity), a photo of a room as @Image 2 (environment). Order matters — the prompt names them by number.

2. 02

   One prompt, one shot

   Seedance 2.5 video-to-video, 7 seconds, 9:16, no cuts. The prompt tells each reference exactly what it may and may not contribute, then locks the camera to the master frame by frame.

STEP 01 · REFERENCES — SEEDANCE 2.5

The Three Inputs — Attach in This Order

The whole trick lives in a division of labour. Each reference is allowed to contribute exactly one thing, and the prompt says so out loud — @Video 1 is “the camera and timing master”, @Image 1 “defines ONLY the replacement pet”, @Image 2 “defines ONLY the environment”. Because every reference also carries a “do not inherit” clause, the model cannot smuggle the master clip's rug into your room or your kitchen's light onto your dog. Below are the three inputs behind the clip above: the master video, the photograph of my cat, and the photograph of the room. Shoot the pet photo at the animal's eye level, front-on, in even light — the identity lock copies what it sees, so a clean, well-lit face gives Seedance the most to hold on to. The room photo can be any angle; the prompt discards its framing and keeps only the space.

REFERENCE 1 — @VIDEO 1, THE CAMERA MASTER

REFERENCE 2 & 3 — @IMAGE 1 AND @IMAGE 2

STEP 02 · THE PROMPT — SEEDANCE 2.5

OUTPUT — FIVE CHECKPOINTS OF THE ORBIT

STEP 03

Anatomy — Why the Orbit Transfers

The prompt is long because a video-to-video swap has more ways to fail than a text-to-video shot: the camera can slow down, the orbit can stop early, the original animal can bleed through. Every block below closes one of those doors, and every claim is anchored to a line you just pasted.

1. 01

   The contract

   “FORMAT: 7s / 9:16 vertical / pet and environment replacement / one continuous shot, no cuts.” The first line names the job as a replacement, not a creation. Seedance now knows the source clip is the truth about motion and everything else is negotiable — and that it may not cut.

2. 02

   Three references, three jobs

   “@Video 1 is the camera and timing master”, “@Image 1 defines ONLY the replacement pet”, “@Image 2 defines ONLY the environment.” Each reference gets a capitalised ONLY and a matching “Do not inherit” list. That is what stops the master clip's room leaking into yours.

3. 03

   The camera lock

   “The camera is a frame-by-frame copy of @Video 1” — then the move is spelled out in order: extreme close-up, fast pull-back, full low-angle 360° orbit, the pass under furniture, the return. Naming each beat lets the model check itself against the clip at every moment.

4. 04

   The transplant logic

   “The furniture of @Image 2 appears where the original room's furniture appeared along the camera path.” The occlusions are inherited from the master; only what is occluding changes. The scale clause — “keep its body center and floor position identical and scale the body naturally” — is why a small dog or a big cat still sits in the same place.

5. 05

   The light wrap

   “The lighting of @Image 2 wraps the fur naturally, with matching shadows on the floor and correct occlusion as the camera passes furniture.” Without this line the pet is a cut-out; with it the room's lamps and window fall onto the animal and the shot reads as photographed.

6. 06

   Sound as room tone

   “AUDIO: quiet room tone, soft fur and floor sounds, no music.” A home video has a home's silence. Asking for fur and floor sounds instead of a score keeps the clip in the world of a phone recording, which is exactly where a pet video belongs.

7. 07

   The insurance

   The negative prompt bans every failure separately: “no slow camera, no slow motion, no incomplete orbit, no camera stopping early, no static hold.” The two oddly specific bans — “no original tabby cat”, “no blue carpet” — name whatever lived in the master clip the prompt was first written for; leave them in, they cost nothing and they set the pattern.

THE RESULT

Output — A Living Room That Was Only Ever a Photo

Check your own result against the master clip, not against your memory of it. Play both side by side: the close-up should open at the same instant, the pull-back should reach the wide at the same beat, and the orbit should complete — a full circle, not three quarters — before the return to the face. If the camera lingers or the circle falls short, the prompt has not changed; regenerate. If the animal's eyes or fur drift, retake @Image 1 in flatter light and try again. The room is the easy part — it almost always lands on the first pass.

© 2026 Deniz Akkabak — all prompts and direction by Deniz Akkabak · Instagram @deniz.akkabak · invideo.io/i/DENIZ-ig