30d6c6e1d3 Frames cache: edits keep the frames they can't reach (#2795)
* frames: keep cached frames an edit can't reach

Nudging, trimming or splitting a layer re-rendered the whole comp. The RAM
preview now carries every frame whose stack of active layers is unchanged
to the new comp identity; only the segments an edit touches re-render.

* disk cache: never drop frame writes; save frames kept after edits

Frames get their own write lane (bounded by bytes, written before layer
buffers), so a burst of layer writes no longer drops frames and leaves gaps
in the blue bar after reopening. Frames an edit kept in RAM are written to
disk under the comp's new content key when idle.

* frames: music and hidden layers keep the caches

Layers that can't change pixels (audio-only footage, AV layers with Video
off, when nothing reads them and there are no expressions) no longer count
for the RAM preview's dirty segments or the disk cache's comp and footage
keys. Adding, trimming or moving music keeps both caches.
RENDER_VERSION bumps to effectcraft-render-3 for the new key formula.

* ui-egui: background caching benchmark

cache_bench fills a comp's RAM preview the way idle caching does and
prints frames/s with decoder, footage-cache and disk-cache counters.

* frames: soloed music and hidden layers aren't silent

Solo hides every other layer, so soloing a music track or a layer with
Video off changes the picture. silent_layers no longer drops soloed
layers, so the RAM preview and the disk cache see Solo toggles.

* disk cache: audio files a layer reads stay in the layer salt

Audio-only footage left the disk layer salt so importing music keeps the
keys, but Audio Spectrum and Audio Waveform draw from an audio layer.
Footage another layer reads (or any, when a read layer is a precomp)
counts again, so overwriting that file doesn't reuse stale buffers.

* disk cache: retry frame writes the queue refused

put_frame reports whether the frame is on disk or queued. persist_missing
forgets the key of a refused write, so a full frame lane no longer leaves
RAM frames that are never written.

* ui-egui: cache_bench measures idle caching; checks --comp and --slots

Frames go through request_background with one slot per frame thread, as
Cache Frames When Idle does. An unknown --comp is an error (the active
comp is used only without --comp), --slots is at least 1, and the disk
report flushes queued writes instead of sleeping.

* disk cache: RENDER_VERSION effectcraft-render-6

This branch changes the cache-key formula (silent layers, Solo, read
audio in the footage salt), and upstream #2759 already took render-5
for the clip-clock change, so entries from either must not be reused.

* frames: rewrite RAM frames the disk cache evicted

persist_missing kept every disk key it ever queued, so a frame the disk
cache evicted later was never written back. The disk cache now tracks
frame writes still queued or in progress (frame_pending), and
persist_missing only remembers keys while it converts them.

* frames: idle passes continue while RAM frames wait for disk

persist_missing reports whether there may be more to write (a content key
being computed, frames being converted). Cache Frames When Idle then
schedules another pass, so a refused write is retried without waiting for
a UI event, and the passes stop once every frame is on disk or queued.

* frames: rewrite an evicted frame once, not on every idle pass

A disk cache smaller than the RAM preview, or a frame too large for it,
made idle passes write, evict and rewrite the same frames every 500 ms.
Each disk key is now written at most twice under one disk limit (the
write and one rewrite after an eviction); a new limit resets the count.
The persist test waits for the conversion to forget its keys before
checking that no work is left.

* frames: the work area doesn't change pixels

Setting the work area (B, N) cleared every cached frame, in RAM and on
disk: it was compared with the comp's pixel settings and hashed into the
disk key. It is a preview and render range only, like the Resolution, so
it no longer counts.

* frames: audio edits keep frames unless something draws the audio

Changing a clip's Audio Levels, its audio effects or its Audio switch
cleared the clip's cached frames, and the comp's disk cache, although
nothing drew that audio. The audio now counts only for the layers whose
audio is heard (Project::heard_layers): those a layer picks in an effect
(an Audio Waveform or Spectrum, even on itself), the layers of a picked
precomp, and every layer while an expression (which can read Audio
Levels) exists. Music in a precomp that a waveform in the outer comp
picks is no longer treated as silent either.

* frames: an expression only reaches the frames of its own layer

One expression anywhere in the project made every edit clear the
comp's whole cache, and so did editing a layer another layer reads
(its parent, matte, or a layer it picks). Expressions can read
anything, but they only draw in their own layer: an edit now re-renders
the frames where it changed something, plus those of the layers with an
expression and of the layers that read a reached layer. With
expressions, an edit elsewhere (another comp, an item's name, a marker,
music) reaches only the expression layers' frames.

* frames: an edit inside a precomp re-renders only where the precomp shows it

Editing anything inside a precomp cleared every cached frame of the
comps that nest it, even a music level in it. Project::dirty_spans now
follows precomps: it takes the spans their comp changed in, shifts and
scales them by the precomp layer's start and stretch (its whole span
under a time remap or Responsive Design timing), and keeps the outer
comp's other frames. Layers that read a changed precomp (a matte, a
waveform) re-render where they are active.

* disk cache: keep the frames an edit can't reach

The disk cache keys frames on a hash of the whole comp, so every edit
lost the frames that were only on disk (the blue bar), even a rename;
only those still in RAM were written again under the new key. When an
edit keeps RAM frames, it now also queues a disk carry: on the frame
pool, each kept frame of every disk series in use for that comp is hard
linked (or copied) to its new key with DiskCache::link_frame, oldest
edit first. The old entries stay, so undo finds them too.

* frames: a keyframe edit re-renders only around the keys it changed

Changing one keyframe (its value, interpolation or ease, in the
Timeline or the Graph Editor) re-rendered the layer's whole length, so
a key on a full-length layer cleared the whole cache. A layer that
differs only in keyframes of its Transform properties now re-renders
from two keys before the first changed key to two after the last
(auto-Bezier and continuous tangents reach the neighbouring segments),
to its in or out point past the first or last key. Static values,
expressions, roving keys, time remap and time effects still reach the
whole layer; effect keyframes do too for now (simulations and time
effects read other frames).

* frames: music volume keeps frames while no expression reads audio

Any expression in the project (a wiggle on another layer, even a
disabled one) made every layer's audio count as read, so changing a
music layer's Audio Levels re-rendered every expression layer and
changed the comp's disk key. Audio now counts for expressions only when
one may read it (Heard::audio_exprs): its text names audio or walks
properties by index. An audio-only change nothing reads no longer counts
as a change elsewhere in dirty_spans either.

* frames: a keyframe edit with few keys or beside a self-contained expression keeps the other frames

Changing a Scale key of a layer with two or three keys re-rendered the
layer's whole length: with fewer than two keys before (or after) the
changed one, the span fell back to the in (or out) point instead of the
first (or last) key, past which the value holds. And any layer with an
expression re-rendered on every edit, so a wiggle on a full-length layer
cleared the whole cache. An expression layer is now reached by edits
elsewhere only when its text may read outside its layer (it names a
comp, layer, footage, the project or its source); its parent and the
layers it picks are still read through referenced_layers.

* viewer: the caching chip stays up between uncached frames, with a spinner

The "Caching frames…" chip showed only while playback waited for a
frame, so during caching it flickered on and off with every frame that
arrived. It now stays up 0.6 s after the last wait (and hides at once
when playback stops). It is also smaller and quieter: a spinner, then
"Caching frames" without the ellipsis in dimmed smaller text, on a
fainter chip sized to its text.

* preview: the Preview panel's cache bar counts the preview's Resolution

With a preview Resolution set (Half, Third…), the frames a preview
plays are cached at that scale, but the Preview panel's bar counted the
series the viewer shows. When playback stopped, the viewer went back to
the comp's Resolution and the bar dropped from full to the frames cached
there. It now counts the preview's own series (Auto still follows the
viewer). The viewer and the Timeline's cache bar are unchanged.

* Contributors: add nazar-gavrylyk's name

* frames: an expression reading its own layer's markers or audio re-renders that layer

With expressions in the project, a layer's markers count when comparing it, and its audio counts
when an expression may read audio, so a marker or volume edit re-renders the edited layer over
its own span. Comp markers still count only through layers whose expressions name thisComp.

* frames: a keyframe edit on a layer with an expression re-renders the layer

An expression on the keyed layer can read the keyed property at other times (Rotation reading
Position with valueAtTime), so the frames past the changed keys may change too.

* cache_bench: read decoder counters through effectcraft-media

Only crates/media, crates/export and crates/interchange may depend on the FilmCraft crates.

* cache_bench: clips end where the next one starts

* frames: write-back uses the worker's disk keys while a Roto Brush model is active

persist_missing keyed disk frames on FrameKey::opts, which also carries the Roto Brush model
stamp; the worker and disk_frames key on the render opts' hash alone. With a model active every
RAM frame looked missing, was written again under keys nobody reads, and recorded a second disk
series.

* frames: an edit two precomps down reaches the outer comp

A precomp layer whose comp Arc didn't change was skipped, but the comps nested in it may have
(an edit in Inner leaves Mid's Arc as it was), so Outer kept every frame. Every nested comp is
walked now, each once per edit.

* cache_bench: stop when the disk cache can't be cleared

* frames: one disk carry job at a time

carry_disk runs on every timeline paint and idle pass, and spawned a pool job whenever carries
were queued; during a drag the extra jobs waited on the carry lock and held frame-pool threads
from the viewer. A scheduled flag keeps one job, which drains the queue in order until it's
empty.

* frames: a panicking disk carry is skipped, not left holding the job

The carry job clears carry_scheduled only on its normal exit; a panic in a carry would have left
it set for the session, so no later carry ran. Each carry is caught like the content key's
hashing, so the job always reaches its exit.

* frames: an expression reading its own in point or index re-renders its layer

A trim or rename kept the layer's frames outside the cut when the layer
drew the same apart from its span, but an expression on it can read its
own inPoint, outPoint or name (a fade from inPoint), so every frame of
the layer changes. Such a layer is no longer treated as only respanned.

An expression reading `index` reads the layers above it too: a layer
added or removed there shifts it, so `index` now counts as reading
outside the layer.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>

* frames: an edit of a comp reaches the expressions of the precomps it nests

An expression in a precomp can read the comp that nests it
(`comp("Main").layer("Controls")`), but the walk into nested comps only
counted changes outside the edited top comp. Editing a hidden Controls
layer there (or any layer, when the precomp is time-shifted or reads it
at other times) kept every precomp frame in RAM and linked them all on
disk under the new key. Nested comps now see an edit of the comp above
them as an edit elsewhere.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>

* frames: an edit in a precomp under a time effect reaches its whole layer

A precomp layer running Echo, Posterize Time, Time Displacement or
another effect that reads the layer at other times shows a nested change
far from where it maps, but only the mapped span (a nested frame either
side) re-rendered. Such a layer now gives its whole span, like a time
remap. `reads_other_frames` lists those effects (every `ec.time.` and
`ec.sim.` effect and the others that call `self_at`); keyframe spans use
it too.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>

* frames: a keyframe edit beside muted keys re-renders the whole layer

Muted keys are skipped when a property is evaluated, so the keys that
play around an edited key can be any distance away, but the span counted
two stored keys either side. A segment from an earlier playing key kept
its stale frames. Muted keys now give the layer's whole span, like
roving keys.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>

* frames: one echo in the precomp time-effect test (three saturate alike), rustfmt

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>

---------

Co-authored-by: FredApps <153173854+FredApps@users.noreply.github.com>
Co-authored-by: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
2026-11-05 10:46:39 +01:00
2026-10-26 14:13:03 -06:00
2026-10-31 10:54:51 -04:00

ArtCraft

EffectCraft icon: an engraved unicorn on a pink tile

EffectCraft

Motion graphics and visual effects; an open-source, professional motion graphics and visual effects studio, built in pure Rust.

A free, open-source compositor: compositions, layers, keyframes, 308 effects, layer styles, expressions, 3D cameras and lights, and a render queue, native on macOS, Windows and Linux, and in the browser. Young, moving fast, and already usable.

Status: young and moving fast Written in Rust License: MIT OR Apache-2.0
Scanned by SonarCloud Reviewed by CodeRabbit

Join the ArtCraft community on Discord

EffectCraft on getartcraft.com · ArtCraft · All Crafting Apps


EffectCraft's main window: the animated demo composition in the Composition panel, the Project panel, a Timeline with text, shape and solid layers, and the Properties panel showing the selected text layer's transform, font and paragraph settings

Note

ArtCraft is a community of artists from all walks of life. Digital, generative, music, games — if you make things, you're one of us. Come say hi on Discord.

What it is · Animate · Effects · 3D · Export · Agents · Get started · Status · How it's made · Downloads · The Crafting Apps · License

What EffectCraft is

EffectCraft is for animated titles, motion graphics and compositing work: the kind of thing motion designers and VFX artists need. You build a composition out of layers (solids, shapes, text, footage, other compositions), animate their properties with keyframes, stack effects on them and render the result.

The interface feels natural and responsive, with dedicated panels (Project, Composition, Timeline, Layer, Footage, Effect Controls, Tools, Preview, Effects & Presets, Audio, Info, Paragraph, Character, Align, Progress, Render Queue) and standard motion graphics shortcuts, going further in a few places where it matters to us:

  • Lottie import and export built in, so animations can go straight to the web and apps without a plugin.
  • A project file you can read. Projects are versioned JSON (.ecproj), so they diff cleanly in version control.
  • Everything is scriptable. Menu actions, timeline edits and property changes are exposed as commands. Engine commands are available through the CLI, JSON control channel and MCP; UI-only commands use the frontend dispatcher and can be invoked through the control channel or an attached MCP bridge.
  • No FFmpeg. Video and audio decoding and encoding are pure Rust: FilmCraft's codecs and EffectCraft's own VP9, AV1, HEVC and Opus encoders.

Animate

The panels, menus and shortcuts follow standard motion design conventions: Project, Composition, Timeline, Effect Controls, Properties, Effects & Presets, Character, Paragraph, Align, Info, Preview, Audio and the Render Queue, docked the way you expect. Drag footage, comps and effects between them: onto the comp viewer, where they land under the pointer, or into the Timeline, between layers and at the time you point to.

  • Layers of every kind: solids, shapes, text, footage, nested compositions, nulls, adjustment layers, cameras and lights; parenting, track mattes, all 38 blend modes, motion blur.
  • Keyframes that behave the same: linear, Bezier, hold, auto and continuous Bezier, roving keys, Easy Ease (F9), Keyframe Velocity and Interpolation dialogs, copy and paste at the current time, and a Graph Editor with value and speed graphs and draggable handles.
  • Time: time remapping, time stretch, time-reverse, freeze frame, work area, markers, exact frame-accurate timing at every frame rate including 29.97 drop-frame.
  • Shapes and masks: shape layers with trim paths, repeaters, round corners, offset, zig zag, twist, wiggle, merge paths and gradient strokes; masks drawn with the pen tool, with modes, feather, expansion and vertex editing in the viewer.
  • Text: point and paragraph text with real shaping in any font installed on your machine, the Character and Paragraph panels, and text animators with range selectors.
  • Expressions: JavaScript with the standard motion expressions model (wiggle, loopOut, thisComp.layer("…"), vector maths on arrays), an inline editor and the pick-whip.
  • Timeline like you know it: twirl layers open to Transform, masks, effects and the rest; drag rows to reorder layers; rename with Enter or a double-click; the property shortcuts (A, P, S, R, T, M, F, E, L, U and their double presses AA, PP, SS, RR, TT, MM, FF, EE, LL, UU), Shift to add properties, Alt+Shift+A/P/S/R/T to key the current time, Ctrl+` to twirl selected layers.
  • Puppet tools: Position, Advanced, Bend, Starch and Overlap pins on a mesh built from the layer, real-time pin recording, rotate/scale handles, pins driven by (or carrying) nulls for rigging, and follow-through for hair and cloth.

The Graph Editor showing an eased value curve for a text animator's Range Start, with the graph editor's button bar for hold, linear, auto Bezier and Easy Ease

Effects

308 built-in effects across its categories, each with its parameter names, order and defaults: blur and sharpen, channel, color correction (Curves, Levels, Hue/Saturation, a full color-grading panel…), distort (Warp, Bulge, Turbulent Displace, CC Power Pin…), generate (Fractal Noise, Gradient Ramp, Stroke, Write-on, Audio Spectrum…), keying, matte, noise and grain, perspective, simulation (CC Particle World, CC Rainfall, Shatter, Card Dance, Caustics, Wave World…), stylize (Glow, CC Glass…), time (Echo, Posterize Time, Timewarp, Time Displacement…), audio (Reverb, Parametric EQ, Delay, Stereo Mixer…), text, transitions, utility and expression controls. All nine Layer Styles (Drop Shadow, Inner/Outer Glow, Bevel and Emboss, Satin, overlays, Stroke) with Global Light. Preview plays audio in sync, with meters and waveforms.

A CC Particle World burst with Glow, and the Effect Controls panel listing the particle system's parameters

3D

Classic 3D compositing: 3D layers with orientation and material options, one- and two-node cameras with depth of field, lights (parallel, spot, point, ambient) with soft ray-traced shadows, layers that intersect correctly, orbit, pan and dolly camera tools, and Front, Top, Left and Custom views.

The 3D Showcase demo in Custom View 1: intersecting cards lit by a spot light with soft shadows on a gridded floor, with the camera frustum and light drawn as wireframes

Export

A dedicated Render Queue, with Render Settings and Output Modules: H.264 MP4 and ProRes MOV (Proxy to 4444 XQ with alpha) with audio, HEVC (Main / Main 10) and AV1 MP4, WebM (VP9 with inter frames and alpha, or AV1; Opus audio), PNG, JPEG, TIFF, Targa and 32-bit EXR sequences, animated GIF and WAV/AIFF. Field rendering with 3:2 pulldown, effect/solo/guide/depth overrides, crop, region of interest and resize, Render Settings and Output Module templates with defaults, post-render actions, storage overflow and render logs. The same queue runs from the command line. Every encoder is pure Rust (FilmCraft's H.264, ProRes and AAC; EffectCraft's own VP9, AV1, HEVC and Opus); there is no FFmpeg inside.

Lottie goes both ways: File ▸ Export ▸ Lottie JSON… writes a composition (precomps, shape, solid, image, text and null layers, eased and spatial keyframes, masks, track mattes, blend modes, time remapping, optionally expressions) as .json or .lottie, and lists anything Lottie cannot express; File ▸ Import ▸ Lottie… opens one as a new composition.

The Render Queue panel with two compositions queued

Built for agents

Engine commands are available through the CLI, JSON control channel and MCP. UI-only commands need the running app's frontend dispatcher: complete menu access requires the app's control channel or an attached MCP bridge. Headless MCP sessions expose supported engine commands, but not UI-only commands or bridge-only ui_* tools.

  • MCP server: effectcraft-cli mcp speaks the Model Context Protocol over stdio, headless or bridged to the running app (--bridge 9877). Tools cover commands, the project and property tree, keyframes and rendered frames. This repository ships a ready .mcp.json.
  • Command line: one-shot calls with JSON output, for example effectcraft-cli set Main '#1' transform/position '[100,360]' --time 0 main.ecproj --save or effectcraft-cli render --comp Main --out main.mp4, or effectcraft-cli exec file.exportLottie '{"comp":"Main","path":"main.json"}' main.ecproj.
  • Control channel: effectcraft --control 9877 accepts JSON lines to run commands, inspect and click any widget by its automation id, and take screenshots.

See docs/agents.md and docs/control-protocol.md.

Get started

Installers for each version are on the Releases page: a universal macOS app; Windows MSIs and portable zips for x64, x86 and ARM64; Linux AppImage, Flatpak, deb, rpm and tar.gz for x86_64 and aarch64, plus a riscv64 tar.gz; a FreeBSD x86_64 tarball; and the web build. Downloads lists every file. The Windows ARM64 build runs natively on Windows on ARM, without x64 emulation. CI installs that MSI on Windows 11 ARM64 hardware, checks both programs are ARM64 and runs the command-line tool there, but it doesn't open the app's window or run the test suite natively on ARM64 yet, so please report anything that behaves differently.

On Gentoo, the community ::snakebyte overlay packages the Linux release as media-video/effectcraft-bin (not maintained by the EffectCraft team):

eselect repository add snakebyte git https://github.com/switch87/snakebyte-overlay.git
emaint sync -r snakebyte
echo 'media-video/effectcraft-bin ~amd64' >> /etc/portage/package.accept_keywords/effectcraft
emerge --ask media-video/effectcraft-bin

To build it yourself you need Rust 1.95 or newer.

git clone https://github.com/storytold/effectcraft
cd effectcraft
cargo run --release -p effectcraft          # the app (add `-- --demo` to open the demo project)
cargo run --release -p effectcraft-cli -- render --out intro.mp4    # render the demo headless
cargo xtask web --serve 8765                # the browser build on http://127.0.0.1:8765/ (docs/web.md)

New to it? docs/footage.md covers importing footage and image sequences and Interpret Footage.

To work on it: cargo test --workspace, and cargo xtask ci before every commit (format, lints, tests, layering, asset attribution and the WebAssembly build). See CONTRIBUTING.md, docs/architecture.md and docs/testing.md.

Where it stands

EffectCraft is young: its first commit was on 1 October 2026. A comprehensive feature set exists, including 308 effects, but breadth is not the same as full maturity across every edge case. Today it's a good place to try things and to tell us what breaks. It isn't yet recommended for production client work. In particular:

  • Native project format. Projects are saved as .ecproj, readable versioned JSON. Proprietary project formats and After Effects SDK plug-ins are not supported.
  • Fidelity is still being refined. Automated rendering tests currently focus on small compositions, so please report visual discrepancies or unexpected behaviour.
  • macOS is the most tested platform. Linux and Windows users have hit basic interaction bugs, which we're fixing first.
  • The trained models are new. Roto Brush can use MobileSAM (an optional 40 MB download in Settings ▸ Roto Brush) and face tracking can use Google's MediaPipe Face Landmarker (an optional 3.8 MB download in Settings ▸ Face Tracking). Both are actively undergoing evaluation and tuning.

EffectCraft is in alpha: about 91% of the features tracked in docs/target-app-parity.md exist, and we estimate it is about 45% of the way to being ready for full professional production work. The ROADMAP has the plan, docs/target-app-parity.md the measurement and docs/gaps.md every known shortfall. The web build (docs/web.md) runs the full app in the browser. Bug reports are the most useful thing you can send us right now.

How it's made

  • Engine first. A stack of small crates with strict layering. The interface (egui) sits on top and nothing underneath depends on it.
  • Clean room. We work from public documentation and observable behavior, never from proprietary files, icons, presets or code. No code is copied from GPL projects. The full rules are in AGENTS.md.
  • Private by default. No telemetry, and no network access unless you ask for it.
  • One family. EffectCraft shares its time model and text engine design with FilmCraft, and gets its video and audio codecs from it.

Downloads

New to EffectCraft? Download it from the EffectCraft page on getartcraft.com. That's the easiest way to install it.

Want a specific build or format? On GitHub, the latest release has every build listed below, and all releases has earlier versions and their notes. <ver> in the file names is the version number, and SHA256SUMS.txt lists a checksum for every file.

Windows

Build Installer Portable
x64 (64-bit Intel/AMD) effectcraft-<ver>-windows-x64.msi effectcraft-<ver>-windows-x64-portable.zip
arm64 (Snapdragon and other ARM PCs) effectcraft-<ver>-windows-arm64.msi effectcraft-<ver>-windows-arm64-portable.zip
x86 (32-bit) effectcraft-<ver>-windows-x86.msi effectcraft-<ver>-windows-x86-portable.zip

Installers and executables are code-signed. The installer asks who to install EffectCraft for and where. By default it installs for your account only, into %LOCALAPPDATA%\Programs\ArtCraft\EffectCraft, without an administrator prompt; "Everyone on this computer" installs into C:\Program Files\ArtCraft\EffectCraft (Program Files (x86) for the 32-bit build). Later versions install into the same folder. To install silently into a folder of your choice: msiexec /i effectcraft-<ver>-windows-x64.msi /qn INSTALLFOLDER="D:\Apps\EffectCraft". A silent install is per-user by default. INSTALLFOLDER chooses the folder, not who it is installed for; add ALLUSERS=1, from an elevated terminal or deployment tool, for an all-users install.

macOS

Build File Notes
App, universal (Apple silicon + Intel) effectcraft-<ver>-macos-universal.dmg Signed and notarized
Command-line tool, universal effectcraft-cli-<ver>-macos-universal.zip Signed and notarized

Linux

Format x86_64 aarch64 (ARM64) Notes
AppImage effectcraft-<ver>-linux-x86_64.AppImage effectcraft-<ver>-linux-aarch64.AppImage Runs anywhere; updates itself with AppImageUpdate (.zsync files)
Flatpak effectcraft-<ver>-linux-x86_64.flatpak effectcraft-<ver>-linux-aarch64.flatpak Sandboxed; flatpak install --user <file>
Debian/Ubuntu effectcraft-<ver>-linux-x86_64.deb effectcraft-<ver>-linux-aarch64.deb
Fedora/RHEL/openSUSE effectcraft-<ver>-linux-x86_64.rpm effectcraft-<ver>-linux-aarch64.rpm
Tarball effectcraft-<ver>-linux-x86_64.tar.gz effectcraft-<ver>-linux-aarch64.tar.gz Unpack anywhere

RISC-V 64-bit: effectcraft-<ver>-linux-riscv64.tar.gz (tarball only; needs glibc 2.39+, e.g. Ubuntu 24.04+ or Debian 13+).

File drag-and-drop on Linux: The current eframe/winit 0.30 native Wayland backend does not deliver file-hover or file-drop events. On Hyprland and other native Wayland sessions, use File ▸ Import ▸ File… (which accepts multiple files), or start EffectCraft via XWayland if XWayland is installed and DISPLAY is set:

env -u WAYLAND_DISPLAY effectcraft

When the backend delivers events (X11/XWayland, Windows and macOS), dropping media anywhere in the window imports it, and a drop-target hint appears while hovering. On native Wayland the app cannot detect an attempt that generates no event; it shows a startup notice with the File ▸ Import fallback instead.

FreeBSD

Build File
x86_64 effectcraft-<ver>-freebsd-x86_64.tar.gz

Web (WebAssembly)

Build File Notes
Static site effectcraft-web-<ver>.zip Runs in a modern browser; host it on any static server

The Crafting Apps

EffectCraft is one of the Crafting Apps: free, open-source creative tools from the ArtCraft team, each written from scratch in Rust and each able to stand on its own.

App What it's for Code Learn more
PhotoCraft Image editing: layers, masks, type and real PSD files GitHub Website
VectorCraft Vector illustration GitHub Website
FilmCraft Video editing, color and sound GitHub Website
LightCraft Photo library and raw development GitHub Website
PdfCraft Reading, organizing and protecting PDFs GitHub Website
EffectCraft Motion graphics and visual effects GitHub Website
DesignCraft Page layout and publishing GitHub Website
FigCraft Interface design and prototyping GitHub Website
WordCraft Word processing and documents GitHub Website
SoundCraft Audio recording and editing GitHub Website
DeckCraft Presentations and slide decks GitHub Website
CADCraft Computer-aided design GitHub Website
GridCraft Spreadsheets and data GitHub Website
TextureCraft 3D texture painting GitHub Website
Craft Anything See how any software works, then build your own GitHub Website
SolidCraft Parametric 3D CAD by Tangency Labs (community app) GitHub

And ArtCraft itself, our AI image and video studio for artists who want real control.


Join the ArtCraft community on Discord

Come make things with us

Our Discord is where artists of every kind hang out: people who paint, shoot, draw, cut film, set type, and people still figuring out what they like to make. Share what you're working on, ask for help, tell us what's broken, or tell us what you wish these tools could do. Whatever your medium and however long you've been at it, you're welcome here.

discord.gg/artcraft · getartcraft.com · The Crafting Apps · EffectCraft

License and credits

EffectCraft is dual-licensed under MIT or Apache-2.0, at your option. Copyright (c) 2026 ArtCraft Team and the EffectCraft contributors. Required notices are in NOTICE.

Bundled fonts, icons, images and other assets keep their own open licenses; each one is listed with its author, source and license in ATTRIBUTION.md.

The ArtCraft name, wordmark and logos in docs/brand/ are trademarks of the ArtCraft Team and are not covered by this license. They may be used only unmodified, and only as part of this repository and EffectCraft, under docs/brand/LICENSE-brand.txt. Forks and modified versions must remove them.

ArtCraft
Made by the ArtCraft team and community.

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Other 0.1%