Upload one clear photo of your dog (face visible, shot at their eye level, good light), pick Pets mode and the Golden-hour pier scene, and you get an 8-second vertical clip: your pet's photo comes to life, then hard-cuts to them on a wooden pier at sunset, mouth moving softly as if singing into the camera. The clip is silent — you add the Raindance sound in TikTok.
How do I make my dog do the Raindance trend?
The pet version works exactly like the human one, with a different input photo. On our generator:
- Pick the photo first. One pet, filling a good part of the frame, face toward the camera. This matters more than anything else you do later.
- Choose Pets mode. This tells the model it is animating an animal, so it keeps fur texture and animal anatomy instead of trying to build a human face.
- Choose a scene. Golden-hour pier is the original look everyone recognises. Rain on the pier (blue hour), Sunset beach and Reception lights are the other three.
- Render. 9:16 vertical by default, 8 seconds at 720p, usually 2–5 minutes. 16:9 and 1:1 are available too.
- Download the MP4 and open TikTok, Reels or CapCut.
- Add the official Raindance sound in the app, trim so the bridge lands on the pier shot, and post — step-by-step in adding the Raindance sound in TikTok.
To try before paying, every account gets one free 5-second 480p teaser (watermarked, viewable online) — see the free route. Full clips start at $4.99, with pack prices on pricing.
Portuguese-speaking searchers usually look this up as "raindance cachorro" — same trend, same method, same audio.
What makes a good pet photo for Raindance AI?
Pet photos fail for different reasons than human ones. Fur confuses edge detection, and most phone photos of dogs are taken from standing height, looking down at the top of a head.
What works:
- Face clearly visible and front-facing. Both eyes in frame. A three-quarter angle is usually fine; a pure side profile is not — the model has nothing to build a singing mouth from.
- Shot at their eye level. Crouch down. This single change fixes more bad pet renders than anything else. A top-down photo gives the model a skull and two ears, and the result looks flat and wrong on the pier.
- Good, even light. Daylight, window light, or open shade. Avoid direct flash, which flattens fur and causes eye-shine.
- Head-and-chest or full body, not a tiny subject in a big room. If your pet is a small shape in the corner, crop in before uploading.
- One animal per photo. Two dogs in one photo makes the model merge them or pick one at random.
- Resolution. At least roughly 768px on the short side. JPG, PNG or WebP, up to 10 MB.
What to avoid: heavy filters, motion blur from a dog mid-shake, costumes that cover the face, dark fur against a dark background (the model cannot find the edges), and a muzzle pointed away from the lens. Most of this overlaps with the human rules in choosing the best photo.
A practical trick: hold a treat just above your phone's lens. You get a head-on, alert, eyes-open shot in about three tries.
Can I do a Raindance AI trend with my cat?
Yes, and cats are often the better subject because their faces are flatter and more symmetrical than a long-muzzled dog's, which the model handles cleanly.
The one difficulty is cooperation. A sleeping cat photo will not work — closed eyes give you a closed-eyed clip. Wait for an alert, sitting pose with ears forward. Long-haired breeds render well in golden light; very dark cats need brighter light than you would think.
Can I put my dog and cat in the same video?
Yes — that is the pet duet, and it is the most-shared version of this trend. Upload two photos, one animal each, and they appear side by side on the pier, both doing the soft singing performance. See the duet page for how two-photo renders work, or the duet guide if you also want to do a human couple version.
Two things to know about pet duets:
- One animal per photo. Do not upload a single photo containing both and expect a duet. The generator needs them separated so it can place and animate each one.
- Match the light roughly. If one photo is bright daylight and the other is a dim indoor shot, the two sides of the pier can look like they were pasted from different films. Both photos taken in similar light hold together much better.
A dog on one side and a cat on the other, both front-facing, both at eye level, is the combination that lands. More on the pet flow at Pets mode.
What should I expect from the result?
Be realistic about this, because it is where people get disappointed:
- Your animal stays an animal. It does not become a cartoon human, stand on two legs or grow hands. Pets mode deliberately keeps normal animal anatomy and fur. If you wanted an anthropomorphic character, that is a different kind of edit — see the character versions guide.
- The mouth movement is a soft singing performance, not lip-sync. The model never hears the song. It produces gentle, plausible mouth and jaw movement with a slow push-in — on a dog a soft open-and-close, on a cat something subtler. Once you add the audio and the bridge hits, your brain does the rest. Nobody watching a six-second vertical video is frame-matching consonants.
- The clip is silent. No song, no AI vocals. That is on purpose — you add the real track in TikTok so the platform recognises the licensed audio.
- Small details drift. Collar tags and one-off fur patches can shift between the opening photo and the pier shot. Distinctive, high-contrast markings survive better than subtle ones.
- Eight seconds by default. Higher models go up to 15 seconds and 1080p if you want more room before the bridge.
How do I add the Raindance sound to a pet clip?
Exactly as you would for a human clip:
- Open TikTok, tap +, upload your MP4.
- Tap Add sound and search the song in TikTok's in-app library. Always use the library version — audio pasted in from elsewhere is what gets muted for copyright.
- Trim so the bridge — where Tems repeats "I love you" — lands on the pier shot, not the opening photo.
- Before posting, run the music copyright check and turn on the AI-generated content label under "More options". TikTok asks for realistic AI content to be labelled, and a pet on a pier counts.
If a clip does get muted, TikTok documents why sounds get removed and how to appeal. In practice, swapping in the in-app library sound fixes it.
Why does the trend work so well with pets?
The source material helps. "Raindance" by Dave featuring Tems is a slow afroswing love song, and its music video opens on a pier at sunset with golden light on the water. The TikTok challenge that grew out of it centres on the tender bridge. Point that sincerity at a golden retriever and the joke writes itself. The gap between "serious romantic ballad" and "dog, earnest, on a pier" is the whole gag.
New to the trend itself? What the Raindance AI trend is covers the background, and how to make a Raindance AI video is the general walkthrough.