Your First Hour on Gendia: What to Click, What to Ignore, What It Costs

The first thing I did on Gendia was pick the most impressive-looking video model and generate a 30-second clip. It cost roughly what a hundred images would have, and it wasn't very good, because I hadn't yet learned anything about how the platform works.

So here's the hour I wish I'd had instead. If you've just signed up and you're staring at a sidebar full of things, start here.

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What's actually in the sidebar

It looks like a lot. It's really three groups:

The generators, image, video, effects, 3D, audio, music. One panel each: describe a thing, pick a model, press go.

The workspaces, Canvas, timeline editor, story generator, chatbot, book translation. These are bigger surfaces where you build something over multiple steps rather than fire off one generation.

The libraries, Templates, Tools, Assets, Explore. Templates and Tools are where the shortcuts live. Assets is everything you've made.

That's it. Everything else is a variation on one of those three.

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How you pay for things

Everything runs on one credit balance: no separate wallets, no per-model subscriptions. The number sits in the header and the cost of any generation is shown before you run it.

Two facts that will save you real money:

• Images are cheap. Video is not. A Flux Schnell image is 2.5 credits. A 30-second Seedance 2.5 video can be 9,900. They are not in the same category of decision.
• Duration and resolution drive video cost more than the model does. A 5-second 480p draft costs a sliver of a 30-second 1080p render on the same model.

The full breakdown is in what everything costs, but that's the shape of it.

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The first hour

Step 1: Make an image on the cheapest model (2.5 credits)

Open the image generator. Pick Flux Schnell. Describe something you actually want: not "a cat", but the thing you'd genuinely use.

Run it four or five times. At 2.5 credits each you can afford to be wasteful, and being wasteful early is how you learn what prompts do.

Step 2: Fix it instead of regenerating (10 credits)

Take one you liked to the tools and run background remover on it.

This is the most important habit on the platform. When something's nearly right, edit it. A tool costs 10–20 credits and changes one thing. Regenerating costs more and changes everything, including the parts you liked.

Step 3: Make it move, cheaply (20–60 credits)

Open the video generator. Pick LTX Video: the cheapest video on Gendia. Set it to 5 seconds at 480p. Feed it the image you made.

It won't be beautiful. That's the point: you're learning what motion prompts do for 40 credits instead of 1,400.

Step 4: Run a template (varies)

Open templates. These are pre-built recipes: you supply a photo, they handle the prompting.

If you've got a product to sell, this is the fastest route from a phone photo to something that looks like an ad. Our Canvas templates walkthrough goes through it properly.

Step 5: Look at what you spent

Check your balance. Look back at the numbers next to each generation. Ten minutes of this builds an instinct for cost that saves you far more later.

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What to ignore at first

Not because they're bad, because they'll make more sense once the basics land:

• Canvas is powerful and it's a whole workspace, not a panel. Come back to it once you know what a generation is.
• The timeline editor is for assembling clips you've already made.
• Book translation and the chatbot are excellent and entirely unrelated to learning image and video.
• The expensive models. Nano Banana Pro and Seedance 2.5 are worth every credit, once you know what you want to ask them for.

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The two habits worth forming immediately

Draft cheap, finish expensive. Explore on Flux Schnell at 2.5 credits or LTX at 40. Once you know exactly what you want, spend the real credits once.

Read the number before you press go. It's always shown, and it already accounts for your duration and resolution. Two seconds of attention, repeatedly, is the difference between a month's credits lasting a month or an afternoon.

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Start

The free tier gives you credits to try all of this, no card needed. Open the image generator and make something for 2.5 credits.

When you want to go deeper: choosing an image model, choosing a video model, and the photo tools.