6df7eabe05
* GPU: free effect working textures after each call instead of at frame end A GPU frame keeps its encoder open while the CPU renderer runs layers with GPU effects (Gpu::effects -> run_chain). Each call's Enc handed its textures back to the shared pool, where they waited for every open encoder, so all effect intermediates of a frame stayed allocated until the frame ended (17.7 GB by layer 17 of a heavy 4K comp, then OOM). Effect calls now borrow a pool owner (Enc::lent) that is given back once the call's work is submitted or discarded; its kept textures are trimmed to the pool budget, so the rest are freed after each call. * GPU: one pool budget for idle effect calls, trimmed at the end of a render Review of #1523: each idle lent owner kept up to POOL_BUDGET of textures of its own, outside the shared accounting, and there were as many idle owners as effect calls ever ran at once (16 frame threads: ~12 GB after a 4K render). Giving a lent owner back now moves its kept textures to the shared free list, so one POOL_BUDGET bounds what the free list and every finished effect call keep. They skip Pool::release's wait for open encoders: only the lent Enc recorded work on them, and that work is submitted or discarded. Each lend is a fresh owner id, so a lease that outlives its call (an image handed to another encoder) is released through Pool::release; this does not rely on the result being read back. Accelerator::render_end (called when an export ends) drops the kept textures. * GPU: evict the pool's oldest free textures, guard escaped leases Review of #1523 (follow-up to 0a884fb6): - Pool::make_free rejected a texture when the free list was full and never evicted, so once sizes that no longer occur (per-frame blur bounds, padded layer sizes) filled the budget, every later free was a drop and every take an allocation. It now evicts the least recently freed textures until the new one fits. - A lease read by another Enc (dispatch, copy, readback, display) or handed to a cache is marked escaped and always released through the guarded Pool::release, so a lent call can no longer reuse a texture that a still open encoder reads. - Docs: POOL_BUDGET caps the free list only; textures waiting for open encoders and those of live Encs are outside it. - export_async calls render_end from a drop guard, so the pool is also trimmed when an export panics or its future is dropped. - Tests use a private context with its own pool budget instead of a global override; new tests for stale sizes and an image read by an open encoder. * GPU: evict only stale pool sizes, count evicted textures until the GPU frees them Evicting the least recently freed texture for every newcomer thrashed when a frame frees more than the budget in a repeating order (blur/glow intermediates): each free evicted the size the next call takes first, so misses came back to the old level and evict + reallocate raised the peak. The free list now evicts only sizes nobody asked for in the last 2 output frames (Accelerator::frame_end, called by the export per frame); otherwise the incoming texture is dropped and the kept set keeps hitting. Evicted bytes count against the budget until the work submitted so far is done, so evictions run at most one budget ahead of the GPU. * GPU: lower the shared pool budget to 256 MB On 4K RTX 3090 runs 256 MB matches the old code's peak reserved on d_blurglow (9204 MB) and is 256-512 MB above it on c_effects (6592 vs 6080 MB), while staying faster. * GPU: end frames on the multi-frame render paths, route recording through Enc::record Only the export pipeline called frame_end, so off export (preview, remote frames) the pool's clock stood still, no size went stale and a full free list dropped every newcomer. passes::comp_frame (exports), remote frames and the preview workers now end each frame; test without pool_frame_end. Docs: the frame clock is coarse with many frames in flight; dying only throttles eviction, approximately; no cache path escapes images. Enc::record is the single way to get the encoder outside context.rs and marks the images it names (Enc::uses). * GPU: cap in-flight frame memory on Vulkan and DX12 (#1550) wgpu destroys a dropped texture or buffer only once the submissions that used it have completed and the device is maintained. With several 4K frames in flight on an export or effect-heavy render, frames can record and drop working textures faster than the GPU retires them, accumulating freed-but-not-destroyed allocations until a 4-8 GB adapter runs out of memory (#879). Add a memory gate (MemCap) checked every 8 effect steps or layers: - Default cap of 3 GiB on discrete GPUs (low enough for 4-8 GB cards while leaving headroom above the 1.5 GiB upload cache and 256 MB shared pool) and 2 GiB on integrated/software adapters, overridable via EFFECTCRAFT_GPU_MEMCAP_MB (0 disables). - Compare total_allocated_bytes against non-reclaimable bytes (upload cache, pool free list, live leases, staging, zeros) with hysteresis and a post-wait floor so the gate only drains when a wait can free dropped allocations and does not spin when caches or other open encoders hold memory over the cap. - Submit and wait on the current Enc's own SubmissionIndex via a dedicated poll_wait helper (serialized by poll_lock) so a timeout simply carries on without retiring the context or its readback pool. * GPU: warn on invalid EFFECTCRAFT_GPU_MEMCAP_MB, register crop sources, require GPU in the mem-cap child test - memcap: an EFFECTCRAFT_GPU_MEMCAP_MB value that is not a whole number of MiB or overflows 64 bits now logs a warning and uses the default cap (it used to fall back silently, or wrap on overflow). Unset still means the default and 0 still turns the gate off. - Enc::crop records through Enc::record, so a foreign source lease is marked escaped like in copy_into. - The mem-cap child test starts its GPU through require_gpu, so EFFECTCRAFT_REQUIRE_GPU=1 fails when the GPU does not start, and prints a skip line (with the adapter name when the backend has no allocator report), which the parent passes on. * GPU: do not repeat the pool frame-end wait until evicted textures drain A wait that frees none of the evicted bytes (timeout, or a WebGPU poll that does not block) marks the pool stalled; later frames only poll until dying drops. Test covers the no-repeat and partial-progress cases; dying decrement saturates. * Remote frames: end a pending frame that a new render replaces A render arriving while a multi-pass frame waits for readbacks dropped that frame without `frame_end`, so the GPU pool's clock skipped it. Errors return before `frame_begin`. * Render: end the frame even when a comp frame panics `passes::comp_frame` called `frame_end` only after a normal return, so a frame that panicked (or whose future was dropped between passes) never aged the GPU pool. * GPU memcap: warn once when kept memory alone is over the cap; test the edge frames A frame whose non-reclaimable memory exceeds the cap never waits when reclaimable bytes stay below the hysteresis (waiting cannot free the kept set) and now logs that once. Tests cover a frame over the cap, two frames that fit one at a time, and a dropped frame giving its memory back. --------- Co-authored-by: Matej Kozlovský <MatejKozlovsky@users.noreply.github.com> Co-authored-by: FredApps <153173854+FredApps@users.noreply.github.com>
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.
EffectCraft on getartcraft.com · ArtCraft · All Crafting Apps
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 mcpspeaks 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 --saveoreffectcraft-cli render --comp Main --out main.mp4, oreffectcraft-cli exec file.exportLottie '{"comp":"Main","path":"main.json"}' main.ecproj. - Control channel:
effectcraft --control 9877accepts 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.
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.
Made by the ArtCraft team and community.