Premation

Premation is an open-source desktop motion graphics application published under the GNU AGPL v3.0 and distributed via GitHub Releases. It is built with Electron, React, and TypeScript, and runs its entire render pipeline — viewport preview and final export — through a single GPU engine backed by WebGPU with a WebGL2 fallback. The project is pre-1.0 (current release: v0.1.2) and in active development.

What It Is

Premation is a professional motion-graphics editor that covers compositions, keyframe animation, 2.5D space with cameras and lights, per-glyph text animators, bone and puppet mesh rigging, particles, shape layers, effects, masks, and a deterministic export pipeline — all in one project file. The project describes itself as an open-source, AI-native alternative to Adobe After Effects, modelled on AE's Classic 3D workflow so that existing AE users find tools, panel layout, and keyboard shortcuts where they expect them.

The Deterministic Render Architecture

The core design principle is that the viewport and the exporter share one frame loop. Frame time is computed as index / fps rather than wall-clock time, so two exports of the same project produce identical frames and a re-render after a crash resumes identical work. Export streams frames to a temp directory one at a time — peak memory is one frame regardless of project length — and ffmpeg encodes in a child process, keeping the app usable during long exports.

Supported output formats include:

• MP4 (H.264 / AAC) — requires ffmpeg
• WebM (VP9 / Opus, with alpha)
• MOV (ProRes 4444, lossless, with alpha) — requires ffmpeg
• GIF (GIF89a, palettised)
• PNG sequence (zip, with alpha)
• Lottie / bodymovin JSON (vector shapes and transform tracks)

Feature Depth

The README lists 38 effects, 39 animation/text/behaviour presets, and 62 AI tool calls. Animation capabilities include a graph editor with value and velocity curves, independent X/Y position tracks, keyframe assistants (easy ease, time-reverse, sequence layers, stagger), expressions, and motion blur. The 2.5D layer model supports one- and two-node cameras with depth of field, lights with cone angle and shadows, and extrusion and bevels for shapes and text. Rigging covers forward kinematics, linear blend skinning, and FABRIK IK with an ARAP puppet solver. The particle emitter is deterministic: the same seed always produces the same field.

Project files are .motion directory bundles — a folder of JSON chunks (manifest, scene, animation, timeline, meta) plus content-addressed assets — so saves are incremental and local version history uses structural sharing.

The AI Assistant

The editor includes an optional AI assistant that operates through a tool registry of 62 callable tools (insert layers, set properties, create keyframes). Every AI-driven change lands as a single reversible step on the normal undo stack. The assistant supports bring-your-own-key for Anthropic, OpenAI, and Gemini; prompts go directly to the user's provider account with no added fees. In the self-hosted local edition the assistant is currently listed as "coming soon" in the README, as model calls currently route through the hosted gateway; wiring up bring-your-own-key for the local build is noted as the single most useful open contribution on the roadmap.

Two-Edition Model and Current Status

The same source tree builds two editions via a VITE_EDITION flag. The local edition runs entirely offline — no accounts, no network, projects on disk — and is the edition built from the public repository. The server edition adds cloud projects, autosave, version history, end-to-end encrypted sync, and hosted MP4 rendering, backed by a hosted backend that is not part of the open-source repository.

The project is at v0.1.2 (released 2026-07-31), pre-1.0, with the project file format still subject to change. The test suite covers approximately 440 suites and 4,800 tests, plus a golden-image render-test harness with committed reference frames for pixel-stable output across refactors. Installers are unsigned during the beta. The cloud plan is free during the beta period.

Setup Path

The local edition requires Node.js 20+, a GPU supporting WebGPU or WebGL2 (no software renderer), and optionally ffmpeg for MP4/WebM/GIF/ProRes export. Running npm run electron:dev:local compiles the Electron main process, starts Vite, and opens the app with hot-reload for renderer code. Pre-built installers for Windows (x64 .exe), macOS (Apple Silicon + Intel .dmg), and Linux (AppImage x64) are published on GitHub Releases.