Runway AI models

Runway Gen-3 was Runway's early video model (circa 2023) for professional animation tasks. It can animate still images or generate text-to-video clips up to 10 seconds long. Gen-3 outputs were typically 720p (with upscaling options) and aimed for cinematic style. It emphasized creative control, allowing prompts to specify actions, camera moves, and visual styles. Users praised its consistency in characters and environments, though it could struggle with very complex scenes. In practice, Gen-3 served as a reliable workhorse for creative industries, producing high-quality, animated content and setting the stage for its successors.

Runway Gen-4 Turbo is optimized for speed and cost. By default it outputs 720p video but supports 4K upscaling for higher quality. Turbo preserves much of Gen-4's motion realism—handling dynamic lighting and depth convincingly—while sacrificing some fine details in very complex scenes. This makes it ideal for rapid prototyping and scenarios where quick turnaround is needed. Overall, Gen-4 Turbo delivers visually impressive 720p clips with fluid action and is faster (and cheaper) than the original Gen-4, at the cost of slight quality tradeoffs.