Runway an AI tool that creates images, videos, and 3D stimulations, has just released a new tool called the motion brush, which can literally animate any part of a static or still image you want.
What is Runway AI?
Runway is a versatile platform for creating and editing images and videos using various AI models. It’s easily accessible either through a web browser or as a desktop app. The platform is user-friendly and supports integration with well-known generators like MidJourney. You have the freedom to import your own media or use their extensive library. Runway offers exciting features, including transforming text into images and altering images and videos in various ways.
Motion Brush Puts Motion in Still Images
Motion Brush this innovative tool allows you to animate parts of an image with a simple brush action. You can choose specific areas to animate, control the motion’s direction and strength, and even tweak the camera’s movement. It comes with various styles and effects to enhance your creation. The results are high-quality, realistic, and seamlessly consistent. You can create videos up to 10 seconds long and export them in MP4 format. This tool represents an evolution from the earlier infinite image tool, offering more control and superior quality, thus broadening the horizons for AI-generated imagery. The motion brush is a tool that lets you bring almost any image to life, whether it’s a scene from nature, a portrait, a painting, or even a logo. You have the freedom to make either subtle tweaks or dramatic alterations, like making waterfalls flow, fish swim, or fire blaze. You can even make people or animals in pictures move, blink, or smile. This tool adapts to various kinds of images, like photos, drawings, collages, or combinations of these. It intelligently recognizes the outlines and depth of objects, applying motion in a realistic way. You can even combine different motions in one image, like making a bird fly, a flower bloom, and a cloud drift together, blending these motions smoothly for a realistic effect.
How do I use the Motion Brush tool?
Runway is pretty straightforward to use. You can either upload your own image to Runway or pick one from their collection. There’s also an option to create an image using the text-to-image feature.
Once your image is ready, go to the motion brush tool on the right of the screen. A new window will open, showing your image and various options. Your first step is to paint over the parts of the image you want to animate using the brush tool. Feel free to adjust the brush’s size and hardness.
If you make any error, the Eraser tool is handy, along with undo and redoes options. After painting the areas for animation, select your motion modifiers on the left side. These modifiers let you control the direction and intensity of motion along the X, Y, and Z axes. You can also set the camera motion for the entire image, deciding its direction and intensity. Adding style presets is also an option; these presets change the colour and mood of your image with choices like warm, cool, vintage, etc.
Once you’re satisfied with your motion settings and style choices, save your settings. You can preview the animation by hitting play and even adjust its duration up to 10 seconds. When you’re happy with the outcome, click generates to create your video. The time it takes varies based on the complexity of your animation, ranging from seconds to a few minutes. Once done, you can download your video in MP4 format or share it on social media. Further edits are possible using Runway’s other tools.
Technical Side
The motion brush it’s driven by a generative AI model trained on many images and videos. It uses optical flow to estimate motion between video frames and face tracking to identify and follow faces in the image. These techniques ensure the animations look realistic and consistent with the image’s style and content. The tool also employs super-resolution to enhance the video quality, supporting up to 4K resolution.
Price and Affordability
The motion brush tool has various pricing tiers suitable for different budgets. The free plan offers 25 generative credits per month, while the premium plan provides 100 credits and additional benefits like no watermarks and access to Adobe fonts. These generative credits can also be used for other Runway tools and are included in some Adobe Creative Cloud plans, offering great value and functionality at a reasonable cost.
