Full 3D
Render a whole shot in Blender with Eevee or Cycles, restyle it with a video to video model if you want, or have Opus write it as a three.js page instead.
Here Blender makes the final pictures, not a guide. Opus builds, lights and animates the scene, Blender renders it, and a video model is optional: you can restyle the render, or ship it as it is. Pick this route when exact geometry and a repeatable camera matter more than what a video model would invent.
When it is the right route
- Good fit: machines, products, architecture, exploded views, motion graphics and stylized worlds.
- Weak spot: believable human faces. One creator made a whole anime short in code and found machinery, effects, sound and timing strong, but faces at illustration quality were the real limit, even after many render, compare and fix rounds.
What creators have shown (organic unless noted):
- A laundromat built and animated by prompt only, with a spinning dryer, flickering tubes, rain and a slow push in, rendered straight to MP4.
- Opus 5.5 building, rigging and animating a scene with BlenderKit assets, previewed at 480p first because 1080p can take 1 to 2 hours (templated account).
- A clip in the style of Arcane made by Opus in Blender, and another shot with textures painted by code.
- Anthropic's Alex Albert showing a 1906 Market Street world built with Opus 5.5 (Anthropic staff, not sponsored).
Step by step
Work in approved stages
Block, then model, then texture, then light, then animate. Approve each stage before the next, and keep to one system per prompt.
Use library or generated assets
Pull assets from a library or a generator and let Opus arrange, scale and dress them. See Consistent scenes.
Animate
Use keyframes, constraints and drivers. Blender can also turn an audio file into animation curves for motion driven by music (shown in one organic post).
Preview cheaply
Render in EEVEE at 480p, or every 4th frame with Frame Step, and review the frames as a strip.
Render the final
Render in EEVEE or Cycles as PNG frames with Overwrite off, so a crash can resume where it stopped. Encode the frames with ffmpeg (command on Hand off).
Restyle (optional)
Run the render through a video to video model in chunks that fit its input limit. Put chunk seams on cuts or holds, and reuse the same restyled keyframe images for every chunk.
Eevee or Cycles
| Use | Engine | Settings |
|---|---|---|
| Previews | EEVEE | 480p, Frame Step 4, a strip of 4 frames to review |
| Stylized or quick finals | EEVEE | Final resolution, PNG frames |
| Photoreal finals | Cycles | 1920x1080, 256 samples with denoise, PNG frames, Overwrite off |
Low samples look noisy, and a 1080p final can take hours on your own GPU. Samples are a render setting, not a model skill, so put them in the brief.
Restyle with video to video
Prices checked on 15 Oct 2026.
| Model | Input limit | How it keeps your render | Note |
|---|---|---|---|
| Runway Aleph 2.0 | Up to 30 s, plus up to 5 keyframe images pinned by time | Restyle 2 to 5 frames with an image model and pin them at their timestamps | 0.28 USD/s on the API |
| Luma Ray3.2 video edit | Up to 18 s, up to 64 keyframes | adhere strength keeps motion and structure; controls for pose, depth, normals, trajectory | Video to video at 1080p is 144 credits per second |
| Kling O3 edit (through Runway) | Up to 10 s, 720 to 3840 px, up to 4 image references | Edit prompt plus references | One creator restyled an Opus blockout in Kling chunks and stitched them |
| Seedance 2.5 edit or reference | Edit input 4 to 30 s | Call the clip "Video 1" in the prompt | Edit mode forces an adaptive aspect ratio |
| Wan 2.2 Fun Control (local ComfyUI) | Depth, OpenPose, Canny or trajectory control video | Follows the control video | Runs on your own GPU |
| LTX-2.3 IC-LoRA (local) | Render plus its depth map | Structure from depth | One creator's 14 s ship shot |
Pick Runway Aleph 2.0 when you want the longest input and pinned keyframes. Pick Luma when you need to keep structure strictly. More on each model's inputs on Hand off.
The code route: three.js
Opus can also write the scene as a web page that renders in the browser with three.js. No Blender install. It suits blocking references, explainers, and stylized or interactive scenes.
- It is what AA-3D measures. The benchmark where Opus 5.5 ties for first place scores three.js pages built without a GPU. See the section overview.
- It works as previz too. Three.js blocking renders work as Seedance references in the same way as Blender clay videos (organic). One hybrid: model the assets in Blender, export glTF, and run the scene live in three.js (76 minutes, no hand edits, organic).
- Getting an MP4. Ask for a deterministic render loop: a fixed time step, the frame number read from the URL or a global, and
preserveDrawingBuffer: true. Capture each frame with a headless browser and encode with ffmpeg. Or use HyperFrames or Remotion, which render MP4 directly. - Limits. No path tracing, weaker materials than Cycles, and human characters are the weakest part. Best for stylized and technical subjects.
For the full code workflow, see Video from code.
Preview before you commit
Whichever route you take, look at a 480p preview strip before any full render or paid restyle. A 1080p render can take one to two hours, and a restyle is billed per second.
Sources
- Luma Ray video editing docs
- Runway API reference and Runway API pricing
- Luma pricing
- Seedance 2.5 tutorial
- ComfyUI: Wan 2.2 Fun Control
- Artificial Analysis AA-3D
- Examples: hayashimon1, clunk_games, notjazii, xikhar, kevinkern, ModelCollapse38, anxuanng, Ror_Fly (organic); rewind02 (templated); Alex Albert (Anthropic staff)