i created the same animation in every AI video generation platform to see which one is actually the best there's been so many big updates in AI video recently runway Gen 4 Cling 2. 0 the new Luma Ray 2 model how do you know which one to actually use i decided to put them to the test by creating a complete AI sync using each one i compared them across different aspects like expressive character gestures which AI is the best for lip sync and I also do a price breakdown so you know which platform is best depending on your budget the first platform we'll try is Runway Gen 4 it's the newest release in the Runway model series they've got tons of really cool features so the first thing we'll do is create a new project or in my case I already have a project started now to do a fair comparison between all the different AI video generators I'll be turning images into videos so I've got a set of reference images I've already created and I'll be turning these exact same images into videos in all the different AI video platforms to see how they all perform i'm creating a Star Wars inspired animation there's a confrontation between a Sith and a bounty hunter that ends up going pretty badly for the bounty hunter and if you want to know how I created these images of consistent characters in different scenes I'll put a link to a video tutorial in the description so the first thing we'll do is upload our image here and for this first scene I just want to show her walking forwards and the camera panning to follow her so in the prompt I'll write camera pan to follow her walking forwards menacingly for runway we can choose between a 5 to 10 second video not every platform is going to have the option to do this as you'll see later on and then let's generate that video so runway is great with simpler motions like walking the animations look pretty smooth here's another example that shows a bounty hunter crumbling to the ground you can see him bouncing up a little bit when he lands but for more expressive motions like hand gestures it's not really great at those so I try to make him shrug his shoulders and hold his arms up like he's apologizing but it doesn't really follow the prompt he kind of just raises his arms in the air slowly keep that thought in mind beside runway we can also add lip sync to our characters to make them talk so after we create a video you can go to this features tab underneath that's going to have a lot of different things you can do lip sync is one of those and what I'll do is upload my already generated audio file inside here you've wasted my time and now you'll pay for it if we try to generate that the results aren't really great the lips barely even move it kind of blurs and morphs around a little bit now to be fair this character is kind of unique she has red skin with black markings on her face if you try this with a more normall looking human character the results will be better the motions are pretty good as long as the original video has movement in it so a really cool unique feature that runway has is the ability to extend your videos longer from a specific frame so in this case I've got a video of her reaching her palm out to use the force now I want to extend it so that she closes her palm into a fist to show her aggression towards the bounty hunter so if we fast forward the video to the exact frame that we want to extend underneath we can choose from the menu options and find extend from frame then if we enter a new prompt she closes her hand into a fist tight grip angry expression the new extended video will start from this frame and generate a new video sad runway which shows her closing her fist aggressively i definitely recommend trying this tool i think this is one of the best ways to make longer videos especially because you can choose specifically which frame to extend the video from now inside runway we can also upscale the resolution to 4K which is another nice bonus on top of the other features we already have i've got everything I need for the final animation but let's do a cost breakdown rowley has a bunch of different plans but in my opinion only the unlimited plan is worth it which is $95 a month if you tried the other plans you'll run out of credit super super fast so it is kind of costly it's more of a higher budget AI platform now let's see what the animation turned out to look like you've had time where's the boy i've searched every canyon every settlement it's like he vanishes i I can't find him i have no use for the week no more delays i'll find him myself overall I think it's pretty good the main thing that's missing is just more expressive character gestures i think we could have done a lot more with this interaction between the bounty hunter and the Sith if we can make him do some more dynamic movements with his arms the rest of his body so let's see if we can do better using a different platform next up we'll try Hyoa this one is one of my favorites it's really really good at expressive character animations and facial expressions stuff like that and it's very very responsive to your prompts and once again we need to navigate to image to video to putting our reference images and for this video clip to show the expressive ability let's try he shrugs his shoulders and holds his arms up apologetically you can already tell that the motions are way more expressive than compared to Runway he genuinely looks like he's trying to explain himself to the Sith and is kind of confused this is going to work perfectly for my dialogue scene later on i also want to show the Sith punishing the bounty hunter for his failures so I also made this animation of him choking and struggling which I'll also put in the animation later on there is this new director's mode inside Highore which you can find inside the models tab below what's unique about this model is that it allows you to pick from a variety of different camera movements you want to add into the video there's a bunch of pre-made ones you can directly plug and play with or you can customize and add in your own camera motions i did try these it seems to work best for wide angle shots or establishing shots the video will follow the camera motion you ask for pretty closely for example you can rotate your camera around the character in an arc shot there is an option to choose a static camera for the motion but be careful with this when you actually try this option a lot of the times there's barely any motion the camera is fixed but the character also doesn't move at all one of the limitations of Hyo is that it only generates 6second videos and there's no option to make them longer inside but we do have a workaround for this so I've got this video of her pushing her palm out to use the force and I want to extend it and make it longer to show her also closing her fist what I'll do is take a screenshot of her towards the end of the video with her palm out and then take that frame and use it as a first frame for a new video generation so that way we can show her opening her palm and also closing her fist later on another limitation of Hyoa is that there is no lip sync inside the platform which is really important to our story since we have characters talking with each other i tried a bunch of other platforms for this sync. so was one of them you've had time where's the boy and the results aren't great again I think it's because this character is very unique her skin color and the tattoos on her face make it hard for the AI to move her lips around and I'm sure you'll get better results if you try to character with normal skin i also try to do the lip sync inside cap cut so if you have cap cut you can add the image to the timeline and then go to the videos tab on the top right underneath is a bunch of different AI features lipsync is one of them and from here we can put in our own audio file he's a child you're a professional or so I was told again there's just a lot of morphing and blurring around the lip it doesn't actually follow the words that she's supposed to be saying so at this point I was starting to get kind of frustrated i wasn't sure if I was actually going to be able to animate this character speaking but I did want to try one more platform called design which has this new lip sync feature first let me show you what the results look like he's a child you're a professional or so I was told yeah that looks really really good to me i mean it's super expressive it's a little hard to find this lip sync feature inside design let me show you how to get to it inside you'll need to create a new project or go to an existing one which I have and then inside the side menu bar go to this lip sync tab now we can upload an image or a video to do the lip sync too i'm just going to use an image on my character i found that this works best by default design zooms on your character's face a lot so I actually need to move the camera back a bit then underneath we can add an audio file i'll just upload my own audio and then all you have to do is generate the lips sync video for more complex characters like this one I have it's better to just use a static image as the reference for your lips sync so I've got everything I need for the final animation but let's take a look at how much it costs to make videos inside they do have an unlimited plan just like Runway this is best if you're generating a ton of videos but they're actually a pretty budget friendly platform some of these mid-tier plans like the $10 plan gives you a,000 credits and then every day you get a 100 credits for logging in each video costs around 30 credits to generate so per month this will add up to about 140 video clips which is really really good for $10 i'd say for lower budget people this is probably going to be your best option here's what the animation looked like you've had time where's the boy i've searched every canyon every settlement it's like he vanishes i I can't find him [Music] i have no use for the weak no more delays i'll find him myself i really like the way this turned out the whole confrontation scene where the Sith is using the force to attack the bounty hunter it just looks really dynamic the way his lifeless body bounces off the ground is perfect for me the main limitations of Hyua are that there's no lip sync which you'll need to use another platform to do that and there's no way to extend the video but I did show you a workaround now is there an AI platform that can do it all the good character animations lip sync making longer videos let's take a look at Cling AI which in my opinion right now is the best AI video generator out there so let's navigate to the AI videos tab and just like before we're using image to video but let's upload an image of the bounty hunter this time I want to try something that's a bit more complicated than what we did before i really want to demonstrate the power of the Sith using the Force he levitates and floats into the air he grabs his neck with his hands as he's choking he's struggling and flailing his legs he's really in trouble here like in runway we can have five or 10 second videos but before we go ahead and generate this up here in the top you can find a bunch of different models there's the new 2.
0 model and also the older 1. 6 cleaning model both are pretty good but there is a really really big difference in the price first let's take a look at the difference between the quality of the models in the 1. 6 model he levitates and struggles a little bit you can see him grabbing his neck it does do a decent job of following the prompt now if we look at the 2.
0 model it's way more dynamic he floats in the air flailing his limbs around and we can see him really helpless and struggling this is way closer to what I wanted so the 2. 0 model is better at following the prompts overall but it is also way more expensive the 1. 6 model costs 70 credits for 10-second video while the 2.
0 model costs 200 credits so it's almost three times as expensive so for most cases I'd recommend sticking with the 1. 6 model since it is cheaper and you get higher resolution but if you have specific animations that are more complicated and harder to animate you can try switching to the 2. 0 model specifically for those now inside Cling you can extend your videos to make them longer so underneath each generated video there's this option to extend by 5 seconds in this case I've got her holding out her palm like she's using the force and now I want to make her squeeze her hand so let's extend that video and we'll say she squeezes her fingers into a fist strong grip crushing grip and we get a completed 10-second video that both shows her pushing her palm out and also squeezing it into a crushing grip lip sync is also possible inside the cling platform underneath each video you'll find the lip sync option and I've uploaded my own audio inside here he's a child you're a professional or so I was told the results are decent but the lip motion is pretty small it's very very subtle i think it's not as expressive as it could be but to be fair again this is a very unique looking character that's hard to animate another cool feature inside Cling is a start and end frame where we can add in the first frame we want to be inside a video but also the final frame and the AI fills in the middle for us and so using this we can create some really really cool looking camera motions and effects i didn't end up putting this clip inside the final video because it just didn't fit the style but this is a pretty cool thing you can do now Cling is the only AI video platform I'm comparing which does not have an unlimited plan which means it can get pretty pricey there's no limit on the amount of money you'll spend compared to Runway or Hyore the mid-tier plans are okay if you're using the older clean 1.
6 model but for the newest clean 2.
