Luma's Dream Machine v1.5 is Here: Next-Level AI Video Generator

Luma recently released an upgraded version of its AI video generator, Dream Machine 1.5, just two months after the initial launch. This new version comes with a better text-to-video conversion, smarter understanding of your prompts, custom text rendering, and improved image-to-video.

Ahead of its official launch, sample videos have already circulated on X for a couple of days, and they were all amazing. Today, we’ll all finally get our hands on Dream Machine 1.5 and see whether it lives up to the hype and how it stacks up against the competitors.

Let’s get started.

What is Dream Machine?

Dream Machine is an AI-powered video generator developed by Luma. The tool creates high-quality, realistic videos based on text prompts or existing images.

Its key features include:

1. Fast Generation: Dream Machine is an incredibly fast video generator. It can generate 120 frames in 120 seconds or less.
2. Realistic and Consistent Motion: The advanced modeling ensures the videos are both highly realistic and seamlessly consistent.
3. High Character Consistency: Maintain character integrity while simulating real-world physical characteristics, ensuring your videos are coherent and lifelike.
4. Natural Camera Movements: Smooth, natural camera movements that perfectly match the emotional tone of each scene.

These features look great on paper, but how well do they actually work? Let’s dive deeper into Dream Machine 1.5 to see what’s changed.

How to get access to Dream Machine 1.5?

Head over to Luma’s Dream Machine page and create an account for free.

Generating videos is straightforward, just specify the description of the video you want to generate on the prompt field and hit the enter key. There’s not much editing control available except for the ‘Loop’ and “Enhance prompt” checkboxes. No option to change the aspect ratio, video length, or resolution.

Tip: Always check the ‘Enhance prompt’ box for best results. If your text prompt results in an error with ‘Enhance prompt’ enabled, simply uncheck the box and re-run your prompt.

Once the video generation is complete, you have the option to extend it by another five seconds, with the new generation seamlessly continuing from the previous one.

Take note that free users can only generate up to four images per day.

Due to high demand, we are temporarily limiting free tiers to 4 generations/day. Paid tiers have no wait times and no daily limit. — Luma

Example Videos

Here are some of the initial videos I generated with Dream Machine 1.5.

Prompt: A teddy bear in sunglasses playing electric guitar, dancing and headbanging in the jungle in front of a large beautiful waterfall

If you are wondering what the video looks like when generated with the older version of Dream Machine, here’s the result:

The video created with Dream Machine 1.5 looked good, but when compared to a video generated using the older version, I didn’t see much of an improvement. In fact, I found the older version’s output more appealing. What do you think?

Here’s another example:

Prompt: An astronaut running through an alley in Rio de Janeiro.

Unfortunately, this video didn’t meet my expectations. While the setting did resemble Rio de Janeiro, the astronaut wasn’t running, which was a crucial part of the prompt.

When I tried the same prompt using Runway’s Gen-3 video generator, the result was noticeably better, with the astronaut actually running as described.

Now let’s test how well it handles anime-themed videos with this prompt.

Prompt: A Japanese animated film of a young woman standing on a ship and looking back at camera.

This one’s particularly disappointing. The initial frame looked good, but the rest of the video turned into a chaotic mess, with the character inexplicably jumping off the ship.

Again, I tried running the same prompt on Runway Gen-3, and I still got a better result.

Emojis as Prompts

Interestingly, Dream Machine can also understand emojis pretty well. Check out these example videos generated with single emoji prompts.

Prompt: 🧜‍♀️

Prompt: 🧙‍♂️

Prompt: 👩‍🚀

Pretty cool, right? You can throw in a bunch of emojis into the prompt field, and Dream Machine will be able to understand them.

Text Rendering on Videos

One of the standout features of Dream Machine 1.5 is its text rendering capability. This feature allows you to incorporate text directly into your videos, something not commonly found in other AI video generators.

I tested this with the prompt:

Prompt: “wow” in blue balloons in the sky

Awesome! To be fair with Luma, the text rendering capability is very impressive. This feature could be particularly useful for creating videos with captions, titles, or any other text elements.

How much does it cost?

For users who are looking to subscribe to the paid plans, check out the pricing information below. You can subscribe to these paid plans on your account page.

They offer both monthly and yearly subscriptions, with a 20% discount if you opt for the yearly plan.

• For more frequent usage and added features, the Standard Plan costs $29.99 per month (or $23.99 per month if billed annually) and includes 120 (+30) generations with commercial use and high priority.
• The Pro Plan, priced at $99.99 per month (or $79.99 per month annually), offers 400 (+30) generations with the highest priority.
• For those needing even more, the Premier Plan provides 2,000 (+30) generations at $499.99 per month (or $399.99 per month annually), also with the highest priority and commercial use.

Paying subscribers get the following benefits:

• Higher-priority generations when there is a queue
• Commercial use rights
• Watermark-free downloads

Although, free users get at least four free video generations per day. This number and the speed of generation could vary depending on the amount of workload on the servers.

The community has been experimenting with Dream Machine. Since launch, we have added extra capacity to scale to meet the demand. To make sure everyone has the best experience possible, we are dynamically limiting and relaxing the number of free generations, and to help those who need it the most — prioritizing paid accounts. We will keep on working to improve everyone’s experience and are immensely grateful for your patience and interest.

Commercial use

The free tier doesn’t grant permission for commercial use, as defined in Luma Lab’s Terms of Service. You can lift this limitation by subscribing to any of the paid tiers.

Final Thoughts

The race to be the best AI video generator is really heating up, and 2024 is definitely the year for AI video models. We’ve seen a lot of new platforms pop up recently, like Kling AI, Runway Gen-3, Vidu, and now Dream Machine.

Each of these tools has something special to offer, but to be honest, Dream Machine 1.5 still doesn’t measure up to the others in terms of video quality, especially when compared to Kling AI and Runway Gen-3. The text-rendering feature is impressive, though, but overall, it still has some catching up to do.

If you’re searching for a tool to create your next AI-generated trailer or music video, I hope this article has given you some useful insights.

And oh… in case you didn’t know it yet, these are the AI video generators to watch out in the coming months:

• Midjourney AI video generator
• Blackforest Labs AI video generator
• OpenAI’s Sora

‍