Comparison of AIs for architects: Cling, Luma and Runway

Architects interested in technology? Well, friends, if you haven’t yet explored the wonders of artificial intelligence for generating videos from images, you are missing out on a silent revolution. Today I bring you a sparkling (and somewhat obsessive, I won’t lie) comparison between Cling, Luma and Runway, focused precisely on the visual needs of architects who dream of giving movement to their works.

And before you get excited, don’t waste your time asking Sora for help; That AI does magic with text to video, but here we are on another level: images, details and movements! Get ready, because now we break down these technological wonders together to discover if it’s worth jumping on the AI train or continuing to rely on eternal renders of a lifetime.

What do we look for when evaluating these AIs?

Ok, let’s get to the point, because nobody has time for detours. We want clear answers for these needs:

Video resolution: Something that looks like it was recorded with a calculator doesn’t work for us, right?
Image quality: No ghostly glitches, please.
Management of camera movements: We need something fluid, mature, dynamic.
Price: Because, come on, we don’t want to sell a kidney for a couple of videos.
Processing speed: Basic. Nothing that makes us wait a whole nap.

What’s the trick here? Oh well, we use paid subscriptions to evaluate everything. Free credits are lovely until you realize they’re like Wi-Fi on a plane: limited and then meh.

The process: let’s face the giants

Grab your coffee, this is getting technical (but interesting, I swear).

1. Exploring Cling

First, we walked around Cling. The interface is friendly (yay there!), and version 1.5 comes with a cool feature called Motion Brush. This little toy lets you define which parts of your image will move. How useful is that? Well, we’ll see about that in a second. An immediate problem: Cling generates videos of maximum 10 seconds when you create from images. Ideal for Instagram Stories, but not so much if you need to present a complex architectural project.

2. Loading images: quality control

For the tests, we used images previously generated by AI (because, of course, the technology is used to the fullest here). We tried to keep things simple: we didn’t want Cling, Luma, or Runway to go crazy dealing with inconsistent details. Minor adjustments in Photoshop were made to ensure the base image had polished quality.

3. Testing premium mode

Cling has a set of advanced features that, we are not going to lie, require investing in its premium version. In standard mode, the results were decent but… not entirely satisfactory. So we moved on to premium, where the true power of this tool was revealed. Conclusion? If you are going to use Cling, pay the premium, because otherwise you are playing with the “lite” version.

4. Interpretation of movements

We used a simple prompt to define how we wanted movement to develop within a video. Human figures, unfortunately, are not Cling’s forte (or any AI for that matter, to be honest). The results in this section were… intriguing (read: human beings in the form of ghosts). However, the non-human elements, such as landscapes, came out quite well.

Comparison between Cling, Luma and Runway

How did they behave?

Platform Resolution Processing Times Camera Management

Cling Good, but limited to 10 sec Slow (up to 15 min) Acceptable

Luma Excellent Fast Very fluid

runway Competitive Moderate Needs improvement

Up to this point, we would highlight Luma as the clear winner: speed and quality in every sense, especially designed for those looking for dynamic camera movements and longer videos.

Conclusions and recommendations

After experimenting with these three heavyweights, there is no doubt: Luma takes first place if what you are looking for is speed and quality, at a much more convenient price than Runway. Sure, Cling has its charms, but its limitations make it less practical for more ambitious architectural projects.

If you are an architect and are considering taking the leap into this technology, my biggest advice is: do it now! These AIs are not only changing how we work, but also how we present our ideas to the world. Oh, and don’t forget to leave a comment telling me if you know of any other interesting tools; I’m always looking for the next big thing.