Luma Ray3

Ray3 plans a scene before it renders one. It reads complex, multi-step prompts and works through them in order, then reviews its own draft and adjusts before the final pass. For anyone who's fought a video model to keep a character or object in place across a clip, that self-checking is the real draw. It behaves less like a slot machine and more like an animator who sketches a board first. Big difference.

Ray3 generates HDR video natively rather than faking it in post. It supports 10, 12, and 16-bit output and writes EXR frames in the ACES2065-1 color space, so the result slots into compositing and color tools without a conversion headache. If you've ever darkened a washed-out AI clip to make it usable, this is the fix. The trade-off is cost. HDR renders bill higher than SDR.

Draft Mode renders previews around five times faster and cheaper than a full pass, which makes it the natural first stop on any idea. You sketch, preview, and discard a dozen versions in the time a single final render would take, then push only the keeper up to 4K HDR. Why commit blind when a preview costs so little? It's the feature that turns video generation into an actual back-and-forth instead of a slow gamble.

You can draw directly on an image or frame to guide the model. Mark an arrow for camera movement, circle the object you want to move, or sketch a path for a character. Ray3 reads those marks as instructions instead of relying on text alone. It's a small thing that solves a big problem: some spatial directions are far easier to point at than to describe. Worth trying.

Ray3 handles both text to video and image to video, with clips up to 10 seconds. Starting from an image keeps the composition and subject you already like, while a text prompt gives you a scene from nothing. Mixing the two lets you lock a look with a reference frame and then direct the action on top of it. That combo is where it gets useful.

Beyond straight generation, Ray3 can rewrite footage you already have. Modify Video swaps environments, wardrobe, and set dressing while keeping the performance and lighting intact, up to 20 seconds in later versions. Reframe re-cuts a clip to a new aspect ratio, and motion transfer lets you pull movement from one source onto another. Both target the reality of production. Reshooting is expensive. Fixing in the edit is cheaper.

Ray3 outputs frames in 16-bit EXR so the results move cleanly into standard post workflows. For commercials, film, and agency work, that means the AI clip isn't a dead end you can only watch, it's a source you can grade, composite, and cut like anything else on the timeline.