# Worlds you can walk into

Period: Dec 2024 – now · Era: 2024 · The Great Convergence

Generate a place, then film inside it, or let it run live.

World models generate a place instead of a shot. Some build a persistent 3D world you can walk and export (World Labs' Marble, November 2025; Tencent's HunyuanWorld), already used as virtual sets and LED-stage backgrounds. Others stream a world in real time that you steer as it plays: Genie 3 (August 2025) and Project Genie, Runway's GWM-1 and GWM Worlds 2, and audience-steered channels on fal.live. ByteDance is reported to be building one on Seedance.

## How it worked

1. **Build the world** from a concept image or a sentence in Marble, or sketch one in Project Genie for quick look development; block the layout with Chisel when it matters.
2. **Scout it.** Walk the space and find the angles, as Tim Simmons did for Alarm on a Marble space station.
3. **Lock plates and camera paths.** Export stills or a camera-path render as first frames and references for Veo, Runway, Kling or Seedance.
4. **Reuse the set** across shots and episodes: Rik Vasquez's Cryptid Worlds stitched four Marble scenes into one stage for twelve episodes.
5. **Take it to a stage.** Export splats or meshes to Nuke, Blender or Unreal, or load them into VIVE Mars for live green-screen or LED-volume shoots.
6. **Or run it live.** Script a scene as a timed stream of events (GWM Worlds 2's WorldPrompt), or let an audience steer a channel.

## Why it mattered

A world solves continuity at the source: one place, many angles. It also points past the clip altogether, toward films you can walk around in and shows that are generated as they are watched.

## Tools of the era

- StreamDiffusion (2023): https://arxiv.org/abs/2312.12491
- Genie 3 (2025): https://deepmind.google
- HunyuanWorld 1.0 (2025): https://github.com/Tencent-Hunyuan/HunyuanWorld-1.0
- Marble (2025): https://www.worldlabs.ai
- Runway GWM-1 (2025): https://runway.com/research/introducing-runway-gwm-1
- Project Genie (2026): https://labs.google
- GWM Worlds 2 (2026): https://runway.com/research/introducing-gwm-worlds-2

## Example videos and posts

- Realtime hybrid filmmaking · Innovative Dreams: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OpfxgD8tjOQ
- Introducing GWM Worlds 2, a playable world model · Runway: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pmjyB-lc4KQ

## On the timeline

- [Genie 2](https://aifilmhistory.org/entry/genie-2) (2024-12-04)
- [Genie 3](https://aifilmhistory.org/entry/genie-3) (2025-08-05)
- [World Labs Marble](https://aifilmhistory.org/entry/world-labs-marble) (2025-11-12)
- [Runway GWM-1](https://aifilmhistory.org/entry/runway-gwm-1) (2025-12-11)
- [Project Genie](https://aifilmhistory.org/entry/project-genie) (2026-01-29)
- [fal.live — AI Television Directed by Everyone](https://aifilmhistory.org/entry/fal-live) (2026-08-31)
- [Runway GWM Worlds 2](https://aifilmhistory.org/entry/runway-gwm-worlds-2) (2026-09-03)
- [AMD Acquires World Labs](https://aifilmhistory.org/entry/world-labs-joins-amd) (2026-09-28)

## Sources

- World Labs: Marble: https://www.worldlabs.ai/blog/marble-world-model
- World Labs and VIVE Mars: virtual production with Marble: https://www.worldlabs.ai/case-studies/vive-mars
- World Labs: framing worlds (creator showcase): https://www.worldlabs.ai/labs/showcase/framing-worlds
- Runway: introducing GWM Worlds 2: https://runway.com/research/introducing-gwm-worlds-2
- Latent Space: Runway on world models: https://www.latent.space/p/runway
- ByteDance's spatial video world model: https://thenextweb.com/news/bytedance-spatial-video-world-model-zhang-yiming

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Source: https://aifilmhistory.org/workflows/worlds-you-can-walk-into