French drains empty the trench, then the gravel
Empty trench to stone is a Flux 3 first-last job at 9 credits on the same yard; a paragraph will not land on the second photo.
Empty trench to stone is a Flux 3 first-last job at 9 credits on the same yard; a paragraph will not land on the second photo.
French-drain video is disappearance of the ditch, not a talking installer. Frame A is the open trench you dug. Frame B is the stone in that same cut. Interpolate. Text-to-video will invent a neighbour’s fence and a gravel that never sat in this run. Ordinary image-to-video will wiggle the mud and never pour the stone.
Frame A is the empty trench
Photograph the open cut where it sits — same lens height, same house behind it, same grade, the silt fence if it is in the shot. That is the first frame. The buyer already walked that yard. They know the downspout, the walk, the tree they refused to move. A generated suburban ditch is a different address.
The trench still is the contract. Motion is allowed. Invention is not. Crop the crew’s cooler if you have to. Do not prompt the cooler out and hope the model rebuilds the lot. The cheap place to lock the yard is the photograph.
Keep the cut large in frame. A wide drone of the whole property as frame A and a shovel-level gravel as frame B is a warp. Same standing spot. Same lens family. Then interpolate.
Frame B is the gravel in that cut, not a new yard
Photograph the stone after it goes in — or the covered run if that is the state you sell — from the same mark. That is the last frame. The destination is “this trench, filled,” not “a pretty lawn somewhere.”
First-last frame converts an open-ended prompt into a bounded problem. Ordinary image-to-video knows where it begins and improvises the rest. Give it the gravel plate and it has to land there. Empty-to-stone is a destination. If you never attach that plate, there is nothing to land on.
The two frames have to be connectable. Same run, same lighting neighbourhood, same camera. A noon trench into a night patio is a time-lapse you should prompt as one. A different house is a morph. Do not use a last frame from a job three streets over.
Do not treat a loop (same still in both slots) as a French-drain ad. A loop is ambient motion on one plate. This offer needs two states: open, then stone.
Flux 3 interpolates. A paragraph will not.
Create a first-and-last-frame transition video is the named agent job: two photos in, one transition out. The agent passes them as first and last frame and picks a first-last-capable model. Cost is priced per model, shown before you confirm. This is not the plain “turn one photo into a video” capability.
Flux 3 First Last Frame to Video is the catalog row: start frame and end frame, native audio, 720p or 1080p, durations from 5 seconds through 20. The listed rate is 9 credits per second. Audio is on — write the mix (gravel settle, a quiet pad) or write silence. A silent brief still gets a soundtrack you did not choose.
Prompt the travel, not the objects. The stills already contain the trench and the stone. Name the mechanism: hold, then the cut fills; camera locked; no new house; no invented downspout. If the endpoints share geometry, the morph reads as a backfill. If they do not, you get a mushy crossfade you could have made in an editor without a video bill.
Duration should match the fill, not a Reels quota. Five or six seconds between two honest site photos reads as proof. Twenty seconds invents weather and a second trench in the middle. Inspect the midpoint. If the middle grows a phantom crew or a second kerb, reroll the interpolation. Do not regenerate both stills “to match the motion.” The stills are the spec.
A 30-second identity hold of the empty trench is a different object. That pass keeps the ditch “in character” and never pours the stone. Empty-to-gravel needs both stills.
Landscapers and plumbers are nearby, not this trench
Landscapers sell plantings, beds, and a yard that photographs well. That playbook will drift into a lifestyle lawn. French drain is the cut in the ground, then the stone. Pretty grass is frame B’s cover, not the product. Plumbers sit on the indoor fix shot — a clear pipe, a diagnostic walkthrough. This is outdoor drainage on a measured lot. Do not twin either page as the trench listing.
If you needed a crew line about French-drain depth, that is a different generate, cut after the gravel. The fill shot does not have to talk. A synthetic installer explaining hydrostatic pressure is a presenter you did not hire. Keep lips out of the trench.
The test: do I know the start picture and the end picture, and is the point to travel between them without inventing a new site? Yes → first-last. Attach empty. Attach stone. Generate once. If you only have the trench still, do not publish it as the finished drain. If you do not have the gravel photo yet, wait. A generated “after” is a different yard.
FAQ
Can I animate one photo of the trench and hope it fills with stone?
You can. The ending is then the model’s guess. French drain is the gravel in this cut. Pin the stone as the last frame or you are not selling the fill.
Why Flux 3 instead of a talking installer?
Because the product is interpolation between two approved stills, not a mouth. Flux 3 first-last is 5–20 seconds, 720p/1080p, native audio, 9 credits per second. A presenter row will talk over a yard it invented.
Do the two photos have to be the same trench?
Yes. Same run, same standing spot, same lens family. Unrelated plates will connect, and the connection is the artefact everyone notices. The agent job will not rescue a mismatched pair.
Is this the same as uploading one image to image-to-video?
No. One image is open-ended motion. Two images is a bounded landing. The agent notes that this capability needs first frame and last frame. Missing the gravel is a different job.