Avatar III

Avatar III is a HeyGen rendering engine on the v3 API, built around a dedicated photo-to-video pipeline — a higher-quality re-engineered model for photo avatars and video avatars (digital twins and studio avatars).

A single engine value resolves to the right product based on the avatar look type — mirroring how avatar_iv already serves both photo and video avatars:

Look type	Resolves to	Max resolution
digital_twin	Digital Twin	4K
studio_avatar	Digital Twin	4K
photo_avatar	Photo Avatar	1080p

Supported avatar types

digital_twin, studio_avatar, photo_avatar — pass the look’s avatar_id in the request.

Studio avatar looks are video avatars, so they take the same Digital Twin pipeline as digital_twin looks — same 4K support and the same Digital Twin rate.

For motion_prompt, expressiveness, or animating an arbitrary image, use Avatar IV.

Example request

Select Avatar III by passing "engine": { "type": "avatar_iii" } in your POST /v3/videos request:

curl -X POST "https://api.heygen.com/v3/videos" \
  -H "x-api-key: YOUR_API_KEY" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{
    "type": "avatar",
    "avatar_id": "YOUR_PHOTO_AVATAR_LOOK_ID",
    "script": "Hello from Avatar III.",
    "voice_id": "YOUR_VOICE_ID",
    "resolution": "1080p",
    "engine": { "type": "avatar_iii" }
  }'

Video generation is asynchronous — the response returns a video_id you poll with GET /v3/videos/{video_id}. For pricing, see Self-Serve Pricing and Enterprise Pricing. To compare engines, see Models.