Expanding Video Generation on Layer with Wan 2.1

Video is a critical part of game development, powering everything from trailers and UA campaigns to in-game animations and dynamic backgrounds. High-quality video production has always been expensive and time-consuming - but not anymore! With AI-powered video generation you can create content faster (and MUCH cheaper) than before.

To make this even more of a reality, we’re adding another powerful tool to the mix: Wan 2.1, Alibaba’s latest AI model for text-to-video and image-to-video generation.

This model joins our lineup of top-tier video models - including Hunyuan, Kling 1.5 Pro, Minimax, Minimax Live - with Kling 1.6 Pro and Veo 2 recently added.

Wan 2.1 brings a new level of efficiency and consistency to video, with a cutting-edge diffusion architecture and features like 3D causal VAE encoding for sharper outputs. It’s designed to generate amazing HQ videos while keeping memory usage low - making it a great fit for game teams looking to create visually compelling assets with less overhead.

Meet Wan 2.1: The newest video model on Layer

Wan 2.1 isn’t just another video model - it’s a serious step forward for AI-powered video generation. Developed by Alibaba, it outperforms other major video models in key areas like motion smoothness, scene consistency, and spatial accuracy.

One of Wan 2.1’s biggest strengths is speed. Thanks to its cutting-edge spatio-temporal Variational Autoencoder (VAE) architecture, it reconstructs videos 2.5x faster than competing models. This makes it an ideal fit for real-time or near-real-time content creation - whether you're iterating on in-game animations or generating ad creative at scale.

Speed is also just part of the story, a huge feature is the training data. Wan 2.1 is trained on an absolutely massive dataset, around 1.5 billion videos and 10 billion images, which makes outputs more natural and fluid. This is important when you’re trying to bring complex assets like characters to life, with lifelike animations and movement inside cutscenes or cinematics.

With Wan 2.1 now live on Layer, game studios have another powerful tool to bring their cinematics, animations, and content to life - faster and at higher quality than ever before. Whether you’re generating spicy marketing trailers, crispy in-game assets, or looping background animations, this model delivers fluid motion, sharp details, and some of the best consistency we’ve seen to date.

Ready to see what Wan 2.1 can do? Jump into Layer and start creating today. 🚀