The frame you approve is the frame you ship.
Premation is a professional motion studio. Dynamic WebGPU timeline rendering ensures your preview and final export are identical.
- Title lockup
- Product plate
- bg_gradient
- particles_emitter
Everything a shot needs, in one document
Layers, curves, depth, rigging and rendering live in the same project file - no round-trips between four applications to finish one ten-second title card.
Keyframes on any numeric property
Linear, ease, ease-in, ease-out, hold and custom bezier. The graph editor edits value and velocity curves directly, and position keeps X and Y as independent tracks so they can be eased separately.
- Graph editor
- Keyframe assistants
- Expressions
- Motion presets
Cameras, lights and depth
Make any layer 3D to gain Z position and X/Y rotation. One- and two-node cameras with depth of field, lights with cone angle and shadows, extrusion and bevels for shapes and text.
Per-glyph text animators
A real selector stack: animate position, scale, rotation, opacity, tracking or colour across characters, words or lines, with range and wiggly selectors. Text on a path included.
Bones and puppet pins on flat artwork
The bone tool builds a skeleton with forward kinematics, linear blend skinning and FABRIK IK. The puppet tool deforms a triangulated mesh from pins with an as-rigid-as-possible solver.
Paths that behave
Pen, pencil, pressure-sensitive brush and curvature tools. Boolean merges, trim paths, pucker/bloat, twist, zig-zag, repeaters, dashed and tapered strokes.
A deterministic emitter
Rate, lifetime, velocity, gravity, turbulence, size and colour over life. The same field always produces the same field, so a re-render is identical to the first one.
One timeline
Every panel edits the same document, and every edit goes through one command system with a real undo stack.
- Title / lockupText
- Product plateImage
- bg_gradientSolid
Describe the motion. Revert instantly.
The optional assistant acts through the same tool registry as the UI: insert layers, keyframe values, and offsets. Every change is one undo step away.
Stagger the five cards in from the left, 4 frames apart, easing out.
A render you can bet the deadline on
One deterministic frame loop feeds every format. Two exports of the same project produce identical frames, and a re-render after a crash resumes identical work.
| Format | Codec | Alpha | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| MP4 | H.264 · AAC | No | The default for sharing. Needs ffmpeg. |
| WebM | VP9 · Opus | Yes | Smaller than MP4, plays on the web. |
| MOV | ProRes 4444 | Yes | Lossless hand-off. Large. Needs ffmpeg. |
| GIF | GIF89a | No | Palettised across the animation. No audio. |
| PNG sequence | zip of PNGs | Yes | The archival option. Audio rides along. |
| Lottie | bodymovin JSON | No | Vector shapes and transform tracks. |
Deterministic by construction
One frame loop feeds every format, and frame time is index / fps rather than wall-clock. Re-render after a crash and you resume identical work.
It refuses to write an empty file
Every path asserts on a real frame count. A zero-frame encode is an error, not a silently successful black video.
Peak memory is one frame
Frames go to a temp directory and ffmpeg encodes in a child process. A multi-gigabyte export never passes through the app's memory.
Preview the actual export
The export dialog renders real export frames with the same snapshot builder the encoder receives, and lets you scrub the whole range first.
Modelled on Classic 3D
Premation maps directly to AE concepts. The tools, coordinates and shortcuts are exactly where your hands expect them. Key differences are explicitly documented.
- All 17 blend modes, track and alpha mattes, parenting and adjustment layers
- Classic-3D layer model: flat planes in 3D space, lit and shadowed
- Keyframe assistants - easy ease, time-reverse, sequence layers, stagger
- Expression controls: slider, angle, point, colour, checkbox, dropdown, layer
Cmd on macOS / Ctrl on Windows and Linux.
- SelectionV
- RotationW
- Pan behindY
- PenG
- RectangleQ
- TextCmdT
- Easy easeF9
- Graph editorShiftG
- Reveal animatedU
- Pre-composeCmdShiftC
- Comp settingsCmdK
- Command paletteCmdShiftP
The questions worth asking first
Is Premation ready for real work?
It is used in earnest, but it is pre-1.0 - version 0.1.0. Expect rough edges, and expect the project file format to still move. Around 4,000 automated tests cover the app and its engine packages, alongside a pixel-comparison render-test harness with committed reference frames.
What does it need to run?
A GPU with WebGPU or WebGL2. WebGPU is preferred and used when available; WebGL2 is the fallback, and the engine steps down automatically and shows which tier it landed on in the viewport header. There is no software renderer - if both tiers fail the app tells you, rather than showing a blank stage.
Do I need ffmpeg?
Only for MP4, WebM, GIF and ProRes export. Premation looks for $FFMPEG_PATH, then a bundled copy in app resources, then ffmpeg on your PATH. Without it, PNG and JPEG sequences, still frames, Lottie and project export all still work.
I know After Effects. How much has to be learned?
Little. Premation is modelled on AE's Classic 3D workflow - the tools, panel layout and most keyboard shortcuts are where you expect them, and shortcuts can be remapped. Where the 3D model diverges from AE, that is documented rather than glossed over.
Can I bring artwork in from elsewhere?
Static SVGs arrive as one intact layer; animated SVGs (CSS or SMIL) are converted into real keyframe tracks you can retime. Lottie/bodymovin files arrive as baked tracks. Images, video, image sequences and audio import too, and video layers seek frame-accurately during export.
Is the AI assistant required?
No. It is optional and needs the companion server; the app is fully usable without it. When it is on, it edits through a tool registry (insert layers, set properties, create keyframes) and every change lands as one reversible edit on the normal undo stack.
Open Premation. The first keyframe is seconds away.
Free for the public beta. No sign-up required. Project files are saved directly on your local disk as plain JSON-based files.
- WindowsWindows 10 and 11 · x64.exeDownload
- macOSComing soonApple silicon · Intel.dmg
- LinuxComing soonAppImage · x64.AppImage
Check this before you download
Premation renders every frame on the GPU. It needs WebGPU, or WebGL2 as a fallback - there is no software renderer. If both tiers fail, the app tells you rather than showing a blank stage.