Open source motion editor
An open-source motion editor you can read, build and fork
Premation is a desktop motion graphics editor whose source is public under the GNU AGPL v3.0. It works the way After Effects does — compositions, layers, keyframes, a graph editor, track mattes, 2.5D cameras — which makes it an open-source After Effects alternative rather than a video editor with some animation added on.
What open source means here
The whole editor is in the repository
The render engine, timeline, graph editor, rigging, effects and every exporter live in one public repository. Nothing you animate with is a closed binary.
You can build it yourself
Node 20 and npm build the local edition from source. It has no sign-in and never talks to Premation's servers: projects, assets and version history stay on your disk.
A real open-source licence
AGPL-3.0-only, an OSI-approved licence, not a source-available one. You may run, study, change and redistribute it. The one condition: if you distribute a modified version, or run one as a service for others, you publish your changes under the same licence.
Your projects stay yours
A project is a .motion bundle on your own disk that opens offline. In the local edition there is no account between you and your files, and no service whose shutdown would strand them.
What is not open
The hosted backend that the installers can optionally sign in to — cloud projects and sync — is a separate service and is not in the repository. The editor never needs it.
Questions
- Is there an open-source After Effects alternative?
- Premation is one, built on After Effects' layer-and-timeline model with its shortcuts. Blender and Natron are open source too, but Blender is a 3D suite with a video sequencer and Natron is a node-based compositor; neither works the way an After Effects user expects.
- Is Premation really open source, or source-available?
- Open source. The editor is licensed AGPL-3.0-only, which the Open Source Initiative approves. Anyone can read, build, modify and redistribute it under that licence.
- Does the AGPL restrict what I make with it?
- No. Animations and files you export are your own work and carry no licence obligation. The AGPL applies to the editor's source if you distribute or host a modified version of it.
- Is the installer the same as building from source?
- Same source tree, different edition. The installers are the server edition: you sign in, and get cloud projects and sync. Building from the repository gives the local edition: no sign-in and projects on disk. Editing, compositing, 3D, rigging, effects, export and the assistant are the same in both.
- Can I contribute?
- Yes. Issues and pull requests go to the GitHub repository, and the contributing guide there covers the build, the test suites and the conventions.