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Premation
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Free & open source · v0.7 for macOS & Windows

The free, open-source motion editor you actually own.

Professional motion design with keyframes, bezier curves, and a graph editor — built with After Effects’ shortcuts. Renders on your GPU, saves to your disk, 100% free.

Download for Windows
PFileEditCompositionLayerEffect
Composition (Composition 1)•
Introducing
Build something
unforgettable
Get started
00:00:00 / 00:05:00
49%
Render Queue Composition 1
00:00:0000000 (60.00 fps)
#Source Name
Position2 keys
Opacity2 keys
beat0s1s2s3s4s5s
tpl_ctaLabel
tpl_cta
tpl_head2
tpl_head1
tpl_eyebrow
tpl_glow
tpl_bg
Unsaved changes·7 layers·1 selected
00:00:00

This one works. Press play, scrub the ruler, click a layer, switch a Properties tab, or hit Export.

Formats Premation reads and writes

Supported formats: SVG, Lottie, MP4 - H.264, WebM - VP9 + alpha, MOV - ProRes 4444, PNG sequence, GIF, Image sequences, WAV audio

Every panel, as it is in 0.7

Nine areas of the editor. Each one below is the real panel rebuilt on the editor's own chrome, and each one works.

Shape the motion, not just the keyframes

One graph editor for value and speed. Every pair of keyframes has real Bézier handles; stagger, audio drivers and the Wiggler stack on top as modifiers.

  • Value · Speed
  • F9 Easy Ease
  • Modifier stacks
  • Bake dynamics
Graph Editor
588 px648 px0:00:360:00:00

Drag a handle. The box on the graph replays the curve.

Read the docs

Graph editor: Shape the motion, not just the keyframes

One graph editor for value and speed. Every pair of keyframes has real Bézier handles; stagger, audio drivers and the Wiggler stack on top as modifiers.

Text animators: Every glyph on its own schedule

The After Effects animator model in full: range and wiggly selectors, per-character 3D, text on a path, 18 presets to start from.

Character: Typography that renders what the panel says

The Character panel's case, small caps, super- and subscript, horizontal scale, baseline shift and stroke all render since 0.7, on any font you have, and every one of them keyframes.

3D stage: Flat layers in real 3D space

Classic 3D with cameras, lights and shadow maps, plus real glTF meshes, environment lighting and per-pixel depth of field for 3D groups.

Rigging: Rig flat artwork and pose it

Bones, IK chains and controllers from biped and quadruped presets, IK/FK switching that keeps the pose, and per-vertex weights painted on the mesh.

Vector operators: Vector paths with a real operator chain

Pen, pencil, knife and curvature tools, then stackable operators: trim paths, repeater, offset, zig-zag, round corners, with tapered strokes.

Effects: 183 effects, 177 of them on the GPU

Blur, glow, curves, grain, keying, distortion and transitions run as shaders on the same graph the export uses, so video with effects plays at full speed and the preview is the render. Six still bake on the CPU, and the HUD says which.

Edit: A source monitor and real edit tools

New in 0.6: set in and out points with JKL, insert or overwrite into the sequence, cut with the Razor, slip and slide edges, dissolve across cuts.

Export: Export docks beside the timeline

Eighteen formats, alpha where the codec allows it, a render queue that runs in a child process and reports into the status bar with Reveal file when it lands.

New in 0.7.0

The GPU release: 177 of 183 effects run as shaders, camera and time verbs in the Layer menu, and a bug batch across tracker, typography and import.

Full changelog · 2026-09-06
rendererWebGPU
fps60
gpu fxglow · curves · add-grain
cpu fx—
177 / 183 as shaders

Effects run on the GPU

177 of 183 effects are shaders now: every keyer, distortion, transition, blur, noise, stylize and layer style. Footage with effects plays at full speed, and a cpu fx row in the HUD names the six that still bake.

Transform
Time
Camera
3D
Create Orbit Null
Set Focus Distance to Layer
Link Focus Distance to Layer
Link Focus Distance to Point of Interest

Layer ▸ Camera

Create Orbit Null, Set or Link Focus Distance to a layer or to the point of interest, and Look at Selected / All under the 3D View menu. The moves people built by hand, as verbs.

Layer ▸ Time
Enable Time Remapping
Time-Reverse Layer
Time Stretch…
Freeze FrameShift F
Speed Ramp to 25%

Layer ▸ Time

Reverse, freeze frame, enable time remapping, time stretch and the speed ramps, on the selected layers, in one menu.

Key light

Ambient Fill on every light

New lights bring an ambient term, so the unlit side of a 3D object is no longer black. Keyframeable like every other light property.

Properties3 layers selected
Position · XMixed
Position · Y540 px
Scale1 x · 1 x
OpacityMixed
Type a value to set all three · drag to offset each

Mixed values across a selection

Select three layers and the inspector shows Mixed where they differ. Type to set all of them, drag to offset each from where it is.

snapshotcurrent
Wide Hero Detail wipe

Camera bookmarks and wipe compare

Save viewport positions as bookmarks and jump between them. Snapshot a frame, then wipe between it and the live composition.

An assistant that writes keyframes, not video

It calls the same 65 tools you have in the UI, so everything it makes is a normal layer you can drag, re-ease and undo. Bring your own API key; there are no credits.

AI Assistant • Tool Execution LogBYOK Active

“Stagger the five cards in from the left, 4 frames apart, easing out.”

Reversible Edit
Cmd + Z to Undo

One engine draws the preview and the export

There is no separate export renderer to disagree with the viewport. Eighteen formats come out of the same render graph you were just scrubbing.

MP4 Standard
H.264 · AAC

The default for sharing. Needs ffmpeg.

WebM Alpha
VP9 · Opus

Smaller than MP4, plays on the web.

MOV Alpha
ProRes 4444

Lossless hand-off. Large. Needs ffmpeg.

GIF Standard
GIF89a

Palettised across the animation. No audio.

PNG sequence Alpha
zip of PNGs

The archival option. Audio rides along.

Lottie Standard
bodymovin JSON

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.

Your After Effects hands already know this

Same tool keys, same reveal keys, same F9. Pick a shortcut below the keyboard and watch the key light up where your hands expect it.

V

Premation uses After Effects keyboard shortcuts: V for Selection; W for Rotation; Y for Pan behind; G for Pen; Q for Rectangle; Cmd plus T for Text; F9 for Easy ease; Shift plus G for Graph editor; U for Reveal animated; Cmd plus Shift plus C for Pre-compose; Cmd plus K for Comp settings; Cmd plus Shift plus P for Command palette.

The model is the same

Comps and pre-comps, parenting, adjustment layers, track mattes, text animators, Classic 3D. Not lookalikes — the same concepts, under the same names.

So is the muscle memory

V, W, Y, G, Q for the tools. U reveals what is animated, P/S/R/T/A open the transform rows, F9 eases. Every key is rebindable if yours differ.

And where AE still wins, we say so

No rotoscoping, and 183 effects against 400-plus once third parties are counted. If your work needs those, After Effects is the right answer and we will not pretend otherwise.

What transfers, and the handful of differencesThe full comparison, including where it loses

Learn it by building something

Two walkthroughs that go end to end, naming the actual panels and buttons rather than describing them in general. No prior motion-graphics experience assumed.

Guide 01

Build your first animation

Start from an empty composition and finish with an exported file, using the real panels — toolbar, inspector, timeline, graph editor and the export dialog.

  • Composition setup
  • Keyframes and the stopwatch
  • Easing and the graph editor
  • Presets and the Animate menu
  • Exporting
12 minBeginnerRead the guide
Guide 02

Build and publish a plugin

What a plugin is, what it may do, how to develop one against the running editor, and the whole path to publishing it on the registry so other people can install it.

  • The package and the manifest
  • Permissions and capabilities
  • The develop-and-reload loop
  • Effects, layer types and panels
  • Signing keys and publishing
15 minIntermediateRead the guide

Free on your machine, priced only for the cloud

The editor is AGPL-3.0 and runs offline with no account. You pay only if you want projects synced and rendered on our hardware.

Self-hosted

Freeforever

The whole editor on your own machine, under the AGPL.

Download
  • Every tool: compositions, graph editor, 2.5D, rigging, particles
  • 154 effects, 36 blend modes and 10 layer styles
  • No account, no network. Projects are .motion bundles on disk
  • Export to every format, offline, with no watermark
  • AGPL-3.0 source: read it, build it, fork it

The assistant and the plugin platform are part of the hosted builds and are absent here — the local edition has no backend, no registry and no revocation list. Everything else runs anywhere the app does.

Cloud

Public Beta
Freein beta

Everything in self-hosted, plus the cloud. Free while we're in beta.

Get the app
  • Cloud projects, autosave and version history
  • End-to-end encrypted project sync across machines
  • Hosted mp4 rendering. Your machine stays free
  • The plugin platform and its registry, with update checks
  • The AI assistant, on your own provider key

Free and open to everyone during the beta. Paid plans are coming soon at $12/month; your projects will always export back to the free build.

What Premation is, in plain words

Premation is a free, open-source motion editor for macOS and Windows: a desktop motion design studio for keyframe animation, motion graphics, kinetic typography, character rigging and video compositing. It is built as an After Effects alternative — the same composition, layer, keyframe and graph-editor model, the same tool keys and reveal keys — so an After Effects user is productive on day one, and someone new learns one set of concepts that transfer.

It runs on your GPU, saves to your disk and needs no account. Compositions render through WebGPU, with WebGL2 as the fallback, and the same render graph that draws the preview writes the export, so what you scrub is what you ship. Exports cover MP4, WebM with alpha, ProRes 4444, HDR10 and HLG, PNG and EXR sequences, GIF, Lottie JSON, SVG and editorial hand-offs.

The editor is licensed under the GNU AGPL v3.0. The optional cloud — synced projects and hosted renders — is the only paid part, and the desktop app never depends on it. It is in public beta at version 0.7.0, shipping weekly; the changelog and the known-gaps page say exactly what is there and what is not.

Before you download

Yes. Premation is 100% free and open-source under the GNU AGPL v3.0. The desktop motion graphics editor runs completely offline on your local machine with no mandatory accounts, no cloud dependencies, and no paywalls for core editing features. Projects are stored as open .motion files on your disk.

Premation

Download Premation

No account needed. Projects are .motion files on your disk.

Every build is published on GitHub Releases, alongside the source it was built from.

Opening it the first time

macOS blocks apps from unidentified developers, so the first open needs the right-click menu. Once, per copy of the app.

  1. Drag Premation to Applications

    Open the .dmg and drag it across. Take Premation-macOS-arm64.dmg on Apple silicon and Premation-macOS-x64.dmg on Intel. The arm64 build will not run on an Intel Mac at all.

  2. Right-click it, then choose Open

    Not a double-click. Control-click or right-click the app in Applications. The right-click route adds an Open button that a double-click does not offer.

  3. Confirm Open in the dialog

    That is the whole workaround. macOS remembers the decision for that copy, so normal double-clicking works from then on.

Both platforms only ask because the beta builds are unsigned. Signing removes the step on each, and no reinstall is needed when it lands. Setup and updates guide

System Requirement Notice

Premation renders every frame on the GPU via WebGPU or WebGL2 fallback. A hardware graphics processor is required.

Specs

GPU & System Specs

Graphics ProcessorDedicated GPU (NVIDIA/AMD) or Apple Silicon (M1/M2/M3/M4)The engine picks WebGPU when it can and falls back to WebGL2; there is no software rasteriser. The tier it landed on is shown in the viewport header, and if both fail it says so rather than showing a blank stage.
Integrated GraphicsIntel Iris Xe / AMD Radeon Graphics with current driversFine for lighter compositions. Note that a WebGL2 fallback can report a maximum texture size of 4096, which bounds how far Continuous Rasterization will re-raster vector content.
System Memory8GB RAM minimum / 16GB+ recommendedMemory scales with composition resolution and cached pre-comps. Export is the exception: frames stream to disk one at a time, so peak export memory is one frame rather than the whole render.
Operating systemWindows 10 / 11 x64 & macOS 13+ (Apple Silicon & Intel)A desktop application running in Electron with native menus and filesystem access. Building from source needs Node.js 20 or newer; ffmpeg is optional for MP4, WebM, GIF and ProRes export.