16 ms·

Show HN: I created an After Effects alternative

1150 points by clementpiki 2y ago

Many years ago, I made VJ softwares (to mix live visuals in clubs) for unexpected platforms like the Game Boy Advance, the Playstation 2 and the Raspberry Pi. This year, I’m back with a new web-app: Pikimov. Inspired by Photopea (a free Photoshop clone), I created this web-based motion design & video editor as an alternative to After Effects, to fill empty void. It's free, without signup, without cloud uploads (your files stay on your machine), and your projects are not used for AI models training.

n3storm 2y ago
Site and brand looks amazing and it's like something that really can compete with AE. Best of the lucks and I hope you will make it open source some day and make it work on Firefox :D
- Melatonic 2y ago
  Nuke blows AE out of the water but is mainly only used by professionals
  - Keyframe 2y ago
    There's overlap in comp, for which people use Nuke. No one does motion graphics AND comp in Nuke. Closest would be Fusion and Flame.
fl0id 2y ago
Wow looks cool. Now if only it could be used in Firefox. And yeah I know it doesn't have some chrome-only things. But afaik that's mostly because google/chrome does what ever they want, and there is no such thing as standards anymore apparently.
- clementpiki 2y ago
  Actually a dev from the Firefox team got in touch with me, Pikimov might be ok from Firefox v130
cloogshicer 2y ago
Wow, this looks really amazing! Must've been a lot of work.
pointlessone 2y ago
So… What are the features vital that only available in Chrome?
- bnt 2y ago
  Not OP but guessing: easier to build/test/debug in Chrome for starters, and if it gains traction try to fix cross-browser bugs. Especially if this is a 1 person show.
- AshleysBrain 2y ago
  WebCodecs and File System Access API I believe. Both pretty essential for an app designed for editing large video files from disk.
  - clementpiki 2y ago
    Yes, File System Access API is the main issue with Firefox
gatinsama 2y ago
Great idea and the product looks great. I looked everywhere for a suitable substitute for AE and there was none.
- briandear 2y ago
  DaVinci, Apple Motion
- skrebbel 2y ago
  DaVinci Resolve has a very generous free version. It's enormous but also powerful.
- rabf 2y ago
  As well as the already Davinci Resolve there is Natron: https://natrongithub.github.io/ https://natrongithub.github.io/ "Open Source Compositing Software For VFX and Motion Graphics."
ottorocket 2y ago
Funny how "No AI" has become an feature. As someone how doesn't know anything about motion design, this looks great!
- smolder 2y ago
  The other day I recommended someone try out pixlr as a free image editor, as I remember it being a nice tool, and they told me "I don't want an AI tool. I hate AI." I was confused, went to the site, and saw it is plastered with adverts for some AI image generation features. The actual editor seems buried. People do NOT like having AI stuff shoved in their face. The investors out there pushing every company to develop an AI strategy or whatever are misguided.
  - whywhywhywhy 2y ago
    > People do NOT like having AI stuff shoved in their face People don't like having bad or unhelpful AI features crammed into products but seeing the growth of ChatGPT, Midjourney, Adobe Generative Fill, Udio and Luma people definitely do like AI that actually works.
    - Kye 2y ago
      The ML-based similar sound search in Live 12 has been a huge help. It replaced searching for the right percussion sound with a button on the drum rack that moves through similar sounds at an instrument or rack level. I can also use it to search for similar Foley to add variety in the textures that tie the track together.
  - tigeroil 2y ago
    You say that but in my experience the same kinds of people who will say that are also the kinds of people who demonstrably don't actually even know what AI is. They're the same types who'll insist that DALL-E is just making collages of other artists' work, for example.
    - rootlocus 2y ago
beardyw 2y ago
I feel like that web only is a positive way forward. If only it was possible to prove nothing goes back to the server I think it would gain a lot more trust. Though companies who want to see your data might not be so keen. On my phone, but will try it out when I get home.
- deleted 2y ago
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- robxorb 2y ago
  Some crypto wallets, facing similar concerns but with I suppose higher stakes, will provide the user download a local copy of the software, load offline a private tab, close it when done and only then, go back online again. A bit fiddly for sure - but seems comprehensive enough.
  - beardyw 2y ago
    Needs browser support really. Probably harder than we imagine.
    - lifty 2y ago
      There should be an electron local app for running offline web apps. Shouldn't be too hard to build.
      - creshal 2y ago
        Desktop browsers have surprisingly reasonable support for offline PWAs and integrate them as desktop shortcuts etc. Better than Android and iOS, in my experience, although neither is a hard bar to clear.
- AshleysBrain 2y ago
  > If only it was possible to prove nothing goes back to the server That's an interesting question, but I think it's also equally difficult to prove for non-browser software.
mdrzn 2y ago
Looks very good! Will give it a try whenever I need a quick video edit on the fly.
notachatbot1234 2y ago
It says "Privacy respected" but there are Google Ads and Analytics included.
- smolder 2y ago
  With ads/analytics, Google and the site operator know you're hitting certain pages at certain times, but assuming what they wrote under "privacy respected" is true, none of your content is uploaded. That's an important distinction to make especially for a browser based app. It's also a very low bar IMO, but one that many other companies aren't clearing anymore, like MS, Adobe, and others.
  - aloisdg 2y ago
    it is so easy to avoid Google analytics as a product developer nowadays that this is really a misplay (e.g. goatcounter, etc.)
    - liquidise 2y ago
      It is so easy to avoid GA as a web user that i’m surprised anyone concerned about this isn’t using an blocker that blocks GA scripts and requests themselves.
      - aloisdg 2y ago
        why not both?
- clementpiki 2y ago
  Without Analytics, I'm blind: I can't tell which feature are popular and which aren't. I need those infos to undertand where I should focus, what are users the more interested in. By "Privacy respected", I meant that I am not asking you for your email, your name, and what you do on the editor stays on your machine: no cloud uploads of your files.
  - 2y ago
billconan 2y ago
but I think each browser tab has a memory limit of 4gb? this means a web based video editor can only work on short clips?
- atum47 2y ago
  Bump for interest
  - deleted 2y ago
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- ffsm8 2y ago
  Lots of factors at play that makes your assumption not necessarily correct. I.e. 1. Newer API such as directory access, which would let the app utilize something like swap as necessarily. And only ever loading the data it can currently handle from the filesystem (https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/File_System_API https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/File_System...) 2. Input doesn't necessarily have to be RAW/8k. You get several h of 1080p AV1 video within 4gb. I think it ultimately depends on how much effort the Devs wants to invest to support large video inputs. If none is invested, then your assumption would be true. I was unable to find the source code, so I wasn't able to check for myself. We'll have to wait for the author to chime in, if they're willing.
  - rootlocus 2y ago
    1. Swapping to disk would kill the performance to an unnacceptable level. 2. I'm assuming video editing software works on a raw format in memory with access to individual frames? Just like Photoshop would need access to individual pixels from an importend JPEG, the actual canvas uses a lot more memory than the compressed input format.
    - clementpiki 2y ago
      That's correct, access to each pixel of each video frame is needed. Each video frame must be inflated from its codec compression.
bluelightning2k 2y ago
As a developer it's rare to see something which leaves me feeling "how would you even build something like that..." but this is one of those. Huge cudos for even attempting and following through with something like this!
- suyash 2y ago
  You start by building your knowledge around computer graphics and modern web development, basically WebGL and modern web APIs have made doing sophisticated graphic applications on the browser. Only limitation right now I see is single threaded limitation on the browser.
  - ptsd_dalmatian 2y ago
    What about workers? Isn’t it basically the same as offloading computation heavy work to separate thread? Also, we have WebAssembly. Afaik, js threads can now share memory using SharedArrayBuffers. So I don’t think we have this single thread limitation anymore :)
    - noduerme 2y ago
      Idk about this specific app, but the main problem with workers is that any data their working on needs to be copied in or side-loaded into them once they spin up. I imagine for huge video files, having each worker load up a separate copy could be a bottleneck.
      - LoganDark 2y ago
        > the main problem with workers is that any data their working on needs to be copied in or side-loaded into them once they spin up Isn't this no longer an issue thanks to SharedArrayBuffer? https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/JavaScript/Reference/Global_Objects/SharedArrayBuffer https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/JavaScript/Refe... I believe the ONNX Runtime uses this for multithreading on the web, see https://github.com/nagadomi/nunif/issues/34 https://github.com/nagadomi/nunif/issues/34
baal80spam 2y ago
[flagged]
- fragmede 2y ago
  You can install it as a chrome app if that's a problem for you.
  - latexr 2y ago
    Chrome Apps are suffering a slow death by Google. https://www.theverge.com/2020/1/15/21067907/google-chrome-apps-end-support-lune-windows-macos-linux https://www.theverge.com/2020/1/15/21067907/google-chrome-ap... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Chrome_App https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Chrome_App > Support for Chrome Apps in the Chrome Web Store was removed from Chrome in June 2022, except on ChromeOS where support has been extended until at least January 2025.
- deleted 2y ago
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atum47 2y ago
I was well on my way to create a software like this [1], it started out as a flash clone, but since I didn't define any scope it started to look like after effects, on the back end I mean, never actually wrote a single line of code for the UI. Are you planning on creating a company out of this? Are you going to monetize it? 1 - https://m.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL3pnEx5_eGm9BbCp2ZTj6LTknue5guAL2 https://m.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL3pnEx5_eGm9BbCp2ZTj6LT...
Andrew_nenakhov 2y ago
Can you please clarify, which exactly key features are missing from Firefox that make this app say 'use Chrome or Edge'?
- ayhanfuat 2y ago
  From the FAQ: > Why no Firefox support Firefox is my daily web browser. As a web developper, I always make sure my work is comptatible with all major browsers. But you can guess a web based video editor is a complex task to achieve, and Pikimov uses several key features that only exist in Chrome, Edge, and maybe Opera, and maybe, maybe, Brave. That's why Pikimov cannot currently work on Firefox (as of today: v127), there's nothing I can do to fix this, it is just not possible. For the curious ones, here are some of the web API Pikimov requires, but are missing from Firefox: - audio data - window showsavefilepicker - videoencoder Note: There is no Safari support due to similar obstacles. https://pikimov.com/faq/ https://pikimov.com/faq/
  - rom1v 2y ago
    For AudioData and VideoEncoder, it should be possible to enable webcodecs by setting dom.media.webcodecs.enabled to true in about:config. - https://github.com/mozilla/gecko-dev/blob/af09c55c0e6253ba8fcb69cf9534046405f4024d/dom/webidl/AudioData.webidl#L12 https://github.com/mozilla/gecko-dev/blob/af09c55c0e6253ba8f... - https://github.com/mozilla/gecko-dev/blob/af09c55c0e6253ba8fcb69cf9534046405f4024d/dom/webidl/VideoEncoder.webidl#L15 https://github.com/mozilla/gecko-dev/blob/af09c55c0e6253ba8f...
    - jampekka 2y ago
      For VideoEncoder at least there's also a polyfill using WASM compiled libav (aka ffmpeg). https://github.com/ennuicastr/libavjs-webcodecs-polyfill https://github.com/ennuicastr/libavjs-webcodecs-polyfill
- AshleysBrain 2y ago
  As I mentioned in another comment, in short, WebCodecs and File System Access API I believe. Both pretty essential for an app designed for editing large video files from disk.
dorkwood 2y ago
Is there an option for custom ease curves, like a graph editor? I love the idea of an After Effects alternative, but if it only has a few simple ease functions to choose from I can't see myself using it much, sadly.
- clementpiki 2y ago
  Not yet, but it has already been asked several times, so I'll keep that in mind. There's balance hard to find: should I try to make it as complete as AE, or make it a simpler so it's more accessible.
  - alt227 2y ago
    If you are advertising it as an after effects alternative (which it looks like you are) then you should be trying to include all features that after effects has.
    - dewey 2y ago
      If most people use 20% of the features of an app, and you create an app that covers these most popular feature really well I think it's fair to call it an alternative. It doesn't say "full clone" or "feature parity".
      - clementpiki 2y ago
        I could not seriously pretend of a 'feature parity', if I can match 10% of features, that should good enough for most users. I'm not expecting the next Marvel movie to get its SFXs done with PIkimov.
        antifa 2y ago
        The cool thing about the word alternative is that it does not mean "drop in replacement".
vlugorilla 2y ago
this is awesome. I hope some video editor comes up that can compete with Premiere. Then with pikimov and photopea, I could totally ditch Adobe for one. Have you considered open sourcing the app to benefit from contributors and build a community?
- akanet 2y ago
  There are many editors that compete with Premiere, which at this point is a janky unusable mess for me. Resolve has been a joy to work with.
whywhywhywhy 2y ago
Few realize that for many AE is the real jewel in the Adobe crown, Photoshop and Illustrator and Premier all have viable alternatives. AE however stands alone as the only tool with it's unique feature set. Yeah other compositing tools exist but they lack the animation/mograph tools of AE, or animation tools exist but lack the scripting/filters/compositing.
david033 2y ago
Nice, but too many animations/chaos on the landing page for my taste. Keep it simple.
jagged-chisel 2y ago
Can I export projects to use in other places? Or import projects from other places? Blender comes to mind. But also, I would like to use motion graphics in an app where the software engineers don't have to re-implement each asset in code.
elomad 2y ago
[dead]
alok-g 2y ago
Side comment: Comparing a web-based software that runs on your own computer vs. installing a (say native) software and frequently updating, isn't it interesting that the former is faster to do? When using a web-based software to ru on your own machine, you are effectively, momentarily, installing it and are able to uninstall by clearing the cache.
- conception 2y ago
  Well, it’s rarely “running” on your machine but is just a client for the server it is running on.
  - sbarre 2y ago
    The app is client-side Javascript, it's most definitely "running" on your machine.
- crazygringo 2y ago
  And when you start a web app you might not even be "installing" 5% of the code, which is great for speed. You can load+interpret JavaScript files dynamically as the user accesses certain features.
- whartung 2y ago
  This is just a testament to the maturity of the platform, and the work that has gone into the portable engine segment. Targeting Chrome targets all of the platforms, and the machines and platform is "fast enough" to do the job without having to dig deep into specific nature of the platforms. It also leverages, I'm assuming, the deep knowledge the developer has of doing other things for the browser platform. They probably could have targeted some other portable GUI toolkit, but this was more familiar. It may well be an even smoother experience than using other cross platform GUI toolkits, plus, of course, the platform is free. Finally, distribution is familiar and likely easier, it's truly cross platform (no need to build executable on the individual platforms, even if its all from the same source base), etc. No bundling, no signing, no app stores. Just a URL shared in a tweet and you're on your way. If it was OSS, it could be parked on a Github page for all eternity. Overall, it's a really attractive platform for developers, just not yet fully embraced I think, as client based applications I mean.
kennydude 2y ago
Looks fantastic, and the comment about Photopea. Photopea is such a gem, and can't wait for their Vectorpea to launch as it's got me out of trouble so many times when I don't need an Adobe license for opening a file once a month or so (I just wish Photopea was OpenSource)
- clementpiki 2y ago
  You will be happy to learn vectorpea.com has been online for many monthes already
  - kennydude 2y ago
    ah nice :) will have to give it a go someday when i need to deal with an illustrator file
- deleted 2y ago
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anovc 2y ago
looks impressive! What are your plans for further development? I guess for this complex project to evolve in order to meet the needs of the professional users it will require lots of work/team/resources/etc. Do you plan to monetize it somehow in the future? or how are you going to sustain it? Another free alternative to AE (targeted at more casual users) that comes to mind is CapCut... which is obviously a ByteDance product. And they already offer tons of features for free, so the competition could be tough...
- kypro 2y ago
  Given it's free, it might be worth open source the project, or at least opening it up to community plugins so that community can build & fund additional functionality.
wdb 2y ago
Doesn‘t seem to work in Safari?
alfl23 2y ago
I really hope you charge money for it and make it awesome, it's about time Adobe gets disrupted and this is a wonderful idea! It will take significant resources, cash and teams to make this into a serious contender, and folks that have problems to solve will always be happy to pay decent dollars for great software.
- majani 2y ago
  He's clearly trying to follow the photopea playbook and make money through ads
martin-adams 2y ago
This is a very nice project and any competition to After Effects is very welcome. One model I'd love to see is a web based front end, but all video processing happens in the backend. Then ship the app as a combined front/backend, or just the front end that connects to a remote backend. That backend could be a server in a studio with beefed up specs, or offloaded to the cloud for solo animators working on complex projects. Seeing a project like this give me hope that we could decouple what the app does, vs how to control the app.
- langitbiru 2y ago
  A good idea is the backend or the cloud could be a paid feature for this application.
- deleted 2y ago
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- pier25 2y ago
  This model would be great even for some desktop apps. Imagine you could offload rendering Blender projects to the cloud automatically.
  - clementpiki 2y ago
    Don't they call it 'render farms'? I will add cloud features, I don't want to deal with massive files hosting. Maybe login box to G. Drive or 1Drive could be a solution.
    - pier25 2y ago
      Yes you can upload the whole project to a render farm etc. This can involve a lot of back and forth until the project renders correctly. But what I mean is clicking on the render button in your desktop app and have the work done remotely and everything solved automatically.
  - martin-adams 2y ago
    It’s more subtle than that, imagine being able to edit a high poly count mesh on a low spec machine. So not just final rendering, but really the main application state. This is what something like After Effects could benefit from. When I tested a full ray-traced FPS demo in the browser and never noticed that the render was done server side, that’s when I believed this is possible.
mrbluecoat 2y ago
Very cool! Although other more complex open source solutions exist, for me the sweet spot between capable and not overwhelming is perfect. I prefer Photopea over Photoshop for that same reason (..just don't go crazy on the anti-adblocker like Photopea did)
- tombert 2y ago
  Which open source solutions exists as an alternative to After Effects?
  - jdiff 2y ago
    AFAIK, the only thing that can even be stretched in a motion direction is Blender, but an AE alternative it is not.
  - emigrantdd 2y ago
    also interested
  - bibelo 2y ago
    I heard of Natron, looks promising but it seems slow https://natrongithub.github.io/ https://natrongithub.github.io/
    - deleted 2y ago
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- gaudystead 2y ago
  +1 for Photopea.com. I don't even bother with Adobe anymore. I just wish their subscription could be implemented on a usage basis instead of time based because I use it off and on but the ad blocking is occurring on the network level via a PiHole, and I'm not turning all of that off just to let them serve me ads for a couple hours once every couple months.
999900000999 2y ago
Any reason you couldn't bundle this into an Electron application? It's cool, and free. But what happens when you get bored and take the site down ?
- KronisLV 2y ago
  > Any reason you couldn't bundle this into an Electron application? I know people hate on Electron (sometimes rightfully so), but this does seem like a nice use case, meet your users wherever they are, even offline! As for when I need something native, Kdenlive is pretty nice: https://kdenlive.org/ https://kdenlive.org/ (it's FOSS, they could probably also use a donation https://kdenlive.org/en/fund/ https://kdenlive.org/en/fund/) Oh and DaVinci Resolve, even though effects aren't the main focus (it's a fully featured editing suite): https://www.blackmagicdesign.com/products/davinciresolve https://www.blackmagicdesign.com/products/davinciresolve
- deleted 2y ago
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- vunderba 2y ago
  This is exactly why I would hands down always prefer an electron wrapped application over a web app if given a choice between the two. This is even more important if the app uses some kind of proprietary project file format, since if the website goes down you won't even be able to recover your project (without heavy reverse engineering potentially).
  - clementpiki 2y ago
    You can find my answer about an electron version in the FAQ: https://pikimov.com/faq https://pikimov.com/faq
Rizu 2y ago
congrats op, would you mind sharing the techstack used in creating this
- clementpiki 2y ago
  You can find infos about the tech stack in the FAQ: https://pikimov.com/faq https://pikimov.com/faq
qingcharles 2y ago
This is amazing. I just installed AE yesterday after I decided that I needed to add "motion graphics creator" to my skillset in order to make decent Instagram stories. What's needed now is a page where people can share the templates they've created.
blueboo 2y ago
What would it take to support AE plugins? Nail that and you have something to make Adobe nervous.
jampekka 2y ago
Very impressive, and very needed. Current open source video editors uniformly suck. Glad to see browser technology being put to use. Browser is by far the best API for desktop applications too, despite the very common ignorant complaints on HN. Kudos!
lancesells 2y ago
Congrats OP! I don't have Chrome to test, but this is really nice from what I can see.
enobrev 2y ago
This is excellent! Several years ago I built a prototype of a video renderer on nodejs (v0.8-ish). It's a silly thing to do, rendering video in javascript (especially a decade ago), but it worked well enough to prove that it could be done and a startup pivot was born - one that was eventually acquired by Vimeo. While a colleague (and now friend) was working on porting my silly little renderer to C/C++ to try to get closer to real-time, I built out a UI to allow us to "templatize" dynamic video for our users. This made it possible for our designers to design the video experience for the videos that were dynamically generated for our users' content. That UI very much resembled Flash. Since then I've always wanted to do what you've done here. Before acquisition, I was asking our designers to walk me through how they use After Effects, in the hopes of building our tools in that direction, but then Vimeo showed up and... not too long after I left to start a travel startup. I haven't revisited the video space since. I love this. I _knew_ that it could be done - especially now that WASM is stable - and I'm excited to see someone has done it. And free, no less! Edit: Thought it was open source - thanks for the correction. Also I was way off on the node version.
- wavewash 2y ago
  It is free to use but not open source according to the faq: https://pikimov.com/faq/ https://pikimov.com/faq/
- ramses0 2y ago
  2006: Flash-based, online/web NLVE, focused on clipping / remixing (eg: "TikTok / Stitch Me"). https://techcrunch.com/wp-content/uploads/2006/04/jumpcut.gif https://techcrunch.com/wp-content/uploads/2006/04/jumpcut.gi... ...sadly, acquired by Yahoo, and you know what happened next. I can't find a lot of screenshots / video from the era, but the one above should give you a sense of it.
deleted 2y ago
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InsideOutSanta 2y ago
Dang, the level of feature depth you've achieved here is amazing, and the UX is great if you have some experience with other video editors. This is definitely workable, at least for smaller projects.
itslennysfault 2y ago
What's that little blue bird icon in the top right corner? Seems to go to X, but I'm not sure why. ...jk! On a serious note, this is REALLY cool. Great job. Tiny feedback, your console is extremely chatty. I get this is a beta, but it still might be worth disabling that logging for production deploys. I hope to see this evolve into a commercial product I really think it fills a need and it seems to work incredibly well.
- DonHopkins 2y ago
  It's OK to deadname and misgender Twitter, because she's owned by Elon Musk, and it pisses him off to get a taste of his own medicine.
- clementpiki 2y ago
  As long as there are no red lines, the console can talk. On a serious not, this is a static page, I'm not worried about leaving breadcrumbs that could help mischiefs.
SillyUsername 2y ago
Where did you get the time to do this as a hobby? I spend evenings and weekends working on a project for the last 6 months and it's only half as good. 10x developer maybe, small team, millionaire? xD
- clementpiki 2y ago
  I had previous experience doing editors, and I am not ashamed to admit ChatGPT gave me a hand on some features I was not comfortable with, like editing audio in javascritt for example.
  - ijidak 2y ago
    I'm curious. How long did this take?
emigrantdd 2y ago
Omg I've tried this it's really amazing. I see how many thing you did here, how many hours did u spend to build that?
doctorpangloss 2y ago
This is from my point of view as an experienced developer and VFX artist, including in-depth knowledge of AE. A 30fps limit is surprising 23.976 as an fps does not seem to be dealt with gracefully Clicking report bug should take me to a bug report form with info Interacting with "rectangle" is surprising because the corners aren't draggable. Probably should default to full size I should be able to wind input fields by clicking and dragging on them, such as for rotation When I drag keys around in the dope sheet, and let go with momentum, they appear to keep moving and "settle" in a sort of random place. They should not do that I see that this momentum behavior is also in the play head in the timeline. It really should not do that. Putting in a value in the dope sheet should be enabled, and it should automatically set a key I liked the visualizations of the easing, but it should probably be communicated with the keyframe's icon shape in the dope sheet like it does in AE. It is difficult to move a key to the beginning of the timeline. Architecturally, the preview rendering probably has to work the way it does in After Effects. Guaranteeing a real time visualization is pretty important. I kind of stopped there because it's a bunch of goal-less fiddling. This is really great, there is a tremendous amount of product development. Hopefully you will think deeply about your audience and objectives, and the amount of product development that goes into After Effects.
- clementpiki 2y ago
  Thank you for your feedback, the 30fps limit is temporary, until I have fully tested perfs with video files at a higher framerate can you tell me more about 'and let go with momentum', not sure what you mean? Is it about loss of precision, not being responsive, bad snapping to closest frame?
  - mubu 2y ago
    Have you considered opening a staging or experimental branch on a subdomain perhaps? I think people would definitely be interested in testing out new features before they're released without hosting it themself, and I believe you said hosting Pikimov is very cheap.
  - doctorpangloss 2y ago
1668911361 2y ago
First of all, this is really really cool! Great job! Would you consider building in support for color spaces into the software? It looks like the working color space is linear sRGB, but it'd be nice to at least know, and also support other color spaces as well. Frequently, when I'm rendering from blender, the raw renders will have out-of-gamut colors, which I'll then correct and bring back into sRGB when compositing.
- clementpiki 2y ago
  Tough question, yes I think all colors are converted to sRGB format
czhu12 2y ago
Having never used after effects, I would like to say that photopea has probably been my favorite piece of software in the last 10 years. I diligently disable Adblock on that website and have donated a few times in the past to support them. I hope to see many more alternatives on the market, and lend my support to anyone building!
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dinglestepup 2y ago
This is incredibly impressive! Both the UI and the feature set are fantastic.
- clementpiki 2y ago
  Thank you!
deweywsu 2y ago
Wonderful. You just "created" this?! This seems like it took many years and lots of hours. Great work!
mrandish 2y ago
Wow! This is wildly impressive and deeply inspiring - a truly incredible achievement. Even more unbelievable that it's by a solo dev. Please keep up the amazing work on this project. AE is powerful and feature rich but also bloated with decades of legacy code and niche professional use cases to support, so there's a huge need for what you've built. Not everyone is a high-end animator or special effects compositor. Many of us just want to make cool motion graphics for personal videos, social media and art projects. Based on the great response you've gotten so far, I'd suggest focusing on ways for the community to expand on what you've built with templates and plug-ins.
JackYoustra 2y ago
Just curious - why not open source? (really cool btw, super impressive)
aio2 2y ago
You're crazy. This is really cool.
green-eclipse 2y ago
Side note: I just wanted to comment on the variance of HN submission popularity. OP submitted this same amazing tool as a "Show HN" 20 days ago, with very similar title and shorter description [0]. It got no votes. Today this submission is climbing rapidly. Was the tool very different 20 days ago? I honestly don't know! But you never know how submissions will perform here. It feels pretty random, which makes sense, and also is part of the fun of HN. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40645009 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40645009
- jrhizor 2y ago
  It went viral on Twitter this weekend, which is probably why more people are noticing it now.
  - ssahoo 2y ago
    Also never imagined "NO AI" to become a feature so soon.
  - pvg 2y ago
    I saw it posted on HN by someone other than the author, noticed it had a recent show hn submission and emailed hn@ycombinator.com to see if it might be worth sending the author a repost invite. The author then reposted it.
    - clementpiki 2y ago
      Yes, I've been offered to repost it, with an updated description
- fellerts 2y ago
  If you see something you like that drowns in the new page, you can submit it to the second chance pool: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26998308 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26998308
- flutas 2y ago
  It's likely due to the time more than anything else. I have no insight into HNs peak active times, but posting right before them greatly increases the chance of a post taking off (works on other platforms too). My speculation is, more people check HN when first arriving at work to kick off the day, and that's why his post today is doing well vs the previous one.
NayamAmarshe 2y ago
This is amazing! I have not been able to find a good free AE alternative yet and this looks quite promising!
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
richardfulop 2y ago
on another note if anyone is searching for an AE alternative for motion design I highly recommend Cavalry by Scenegroup
ihgdeb84865 2y ago
[flagged]
- jampekka 2y ago
  The site looks fine and is very functional. I hope no UI designer or a quality template will ruin it.
- audiodude 2y ago
  I think the landing page looks fine and is functional, EXCEPT for the "bullet point" animated GIFs on the bottom. It should maybe come with a seizure warning?
- preommr 2y ago
  I'll also echo that the site looks fine. Very little can beat just clicking "get started" and dropping right into the tool.
bibelo 2y ago
Je suis franchement impressionné when I see a single person accomplishing that type of tremendous work! Keep up the good work
MoonObserver 2y ago
This is incredible work! Is a desktop version planned?
codelord 2y ago
I thought this is using AI so I was gonna dismiss it. But then saw the No AI sign and immediately signed up. Seriously though why is "No AI" a "feature" worth mentioning on top?
- eamonobr 2y ago
  Adobe had some clause where they could train AI based on your creative, effectively building a model that can ultimately plagiarize your work. No AI is a nice appeal in this context. That and it being simple, fully offline, not at the whims of execs trying to bump their share price with AI features that put the user second.
  - codelord 2y ago
    I wish people stopped equating AI with Adobe's content policy.
    - kristiandupont 2y ago
      In this context that's a very reasonable assumption.
      - Qwertious 2y ago
        Yes, but 1) it's unnecessary conjecture when the facts already make them look bad, and 2) it's not the limit of what they could actually do - their TOS says (IIRC) "as long as it's for the purpose of improving our software, we can use anything you make". So they could use peoples' drawn art directly, for splash screens, or even, (speculation) offer it as a template/stock material for anyone who pays them for it. It's not just AI.
- ttoinou 2y ago
  Doesn’t your behavior prove the point of showing No AI ?
  - 2y ago
fallinditch 2y ago
This is great, I'm not a frequent video editor but I can see myself using it.
deleted 2y ago
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multi_tude 2y ago
As a motion designer, I'm curious what features does this has that AE doesn't.
- peteforde 2y ago
  I'd say that the main feature is that it lacks a subscription payment requirement.
  - clementpiki 2y ago
    Nice one
holoduke 2y ago
NoAI will be the new "no sugar" buzz
jk_harun 2y ago
used it and its freaking brilliant. please keep improving it. i want to go away from adobe cursed products
hpen 2y ago
Would anyone use a macOS native animation editor?
k1ns 2y ago
This is truly incredible. I want to remind everyone about Blender's humble beginnings. Great work, I look forward to seeing your product pop back up as others discover it.
set3 2y ago
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set3 2y ago
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set3 2y ago
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BeFlatXIII 2y ago
Looks like it's Chromium-only for now. Not for Firefox and Safari enjoyers.
verbalstoner 2y ago
This seems like an awesome project, but for the love of God, why did you use JavaScript when you are obviously capable of making it in a decently performant low-level language like C or Rust? Browser apps have such terrible performance; I just don't understand your choice of framework.
DidYaWipe 2y ago
[flagged]
ijidak 2y ago
How long did this take to build? I know I read below that you used ChatGPT, which is great. We're going to see more amazing work across the board because of ChatGPT and tools like it.
SilentM68 2y ago
Great app, but I wish it was available as a desktop app, similar to Natron, rather than just online. Some people may not have the capability to access the app online.
- hpen 2y ago
  Would you use a macOS native application for 2d animations?
archon810 2y ago
Pikimov sounds like some russian guy's name. An odd name for a project.

1150 points by clementpiki 2y ago

n3storm 2y ago

Site and brand looks amazing and it's like something that really can compete with AE. Best of the lucks and I hope you will make it open source some day and make it work on Firefox :D

Melatonic 2y ago
Nuke blows AE out of the water but is mainly only used by professionals
- Keyframe 2y ago
  There's overlap in comp, for which people use Nuke. No one does motion graphics AND comp in Nuke. Closest would be Fusion and Flame.

fl0id 2y ago

Wow looks cool. Now if only it could be used in Firefox. And yeah I know it doesn't have some chrome-only things. But afaik that's mostly because google/chrome does what ever they want, and there is no such thing as standards anymore apparently.

clementpiki 2y ago
Actually a dev from the Firefox team got in touch with me, Pikimov might be ok from Firefox v130

cloogshicer 2y ago

Wow, this looks really amazing! Must've been a lot of work.

pointlessone 2y ago

So… What are the features vital that only available in Chrome?

bnt 2y ago
Not OP but guessing: easier to build/test/debug in Chrome for starters, and if it gains traction try to fix cross-browser bugs. Especially if this is a 1 person show.
AshleysBrain 2y ago
WebCodecs and File System Access API I believe. Both pretty essential for an app designed for editing large video files from disk.
- clementpiki 2y ago
  Yes, File System Access API is the main issue with Firefox

gatinsama 2y ago

Great idea and the product looks great. I looked everywhere for a suitable substitute for AE and there was none.

briandear 2y ago
DaVinci, Apple Motion
skrebbel 2y ago
DaVinci Resolve has a very generous free version. It's enormous but also powerful.
rabf 2y ago
As well as the already Davinci Resolve there is Natron: https://natrongithub.github.io/ https://natrongithub.github.io/ "Open Source Compositing Software For VFX and Motion Graphics."

ottorocket 2y ago

Funny how "No AI" has become an feature. As someone how doesn't know anything about motion design, this looks great!

smolder 2y ago
The other day I recommended someone try out pixlr as a free image editor, as I remember it being a nice tool, and they told me "I don't want an AI tool. I hate AI." I was confused, went to the site, and saw it is plastered with adverts for some AI image generation features. The actual editor seems buried. People do NOT like having AI stuff shoved in their face. The investors out there pushing every company to develop an AI strategy or whatever are misguided.
- whywhywhywhy 2y ago
  > People do NOT like having AI stuff shoved in their face People don't like having bad or unhelpful AI features crammed into products but seeing the growth of ChatGPT, Midjourney, Adobe Generative Fill, Udio and Luma people definitely do like AI that actually works.
  - Kye 2y ago
    The ML-based similar sound search in Live 12 has been a huge help. It replaced searching for the right percussion sound with a button on the drum rack that moves through similar sounds at an instrument or rack level. I can also use it to search for similar Foley to add variety in the textures that tie the track together.
- tigeroil 2y ago
  You say that but in my experience the same kinds of people who will say that are also the kinds of people who demonstrably don't actually even know what AI is. They're the same types who'll insist that DALL-E is just making collages of other artists' work, for example.
  - rootlocus 2y ago

beardyw 2y ago

I feel like that web only is a positive way forward. If only it was possible to prove nothing goes back to the server I think it would gain a lot more trust. Though companies who want to see your data might not be so keen. On my phone, but will try it out when I get home.

deleted 2y ago
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robxorb 2y ago
Some crypto wallets, facing similar concerns but with I suppose higher stakes, will provide the user download a local copy of the software, load offline a private tab, close it when done and only then, go back online again. A bit fiddly for sure - but seems comprehensive enough.
- beardyw 2y ago
  Needs browser support really. Probably harder than we imagine.
  - lifty 2y ago
    There should be an electron local app for running offline web apps. Shouldn't be too hard to build.
    - creshal 2y ago
      Desktop browsers have surprisingly reasonable support for offline PWAs and integrate them as desktop shortcuts etc. Better than Android and iOS, in my experience, although neither is a hard bar to clear.
AshleysBrain 2y ago
> If only it was possible to prove nothing goes back to the server That's an interesting question, but I think it's also equally difficult to prove for non-browser software.

mdrzn 2y ago

Looks very good! Will give it a try whenever I need a quick video edit on the fly.

notachatbot1234 2y ago

It says "Privacy respected" but there are Google Ads and Analytics included.

smolder 2y ago
With ads/analytics, Google and the site operator know you're hitting certain pages at certain times, but assuming what they wrote under "privacy respected" is true, none of your content is uploaded. That's an important distinction to make especially for a browser based app. It's also a very low bar IMO, but one that many other companies aren't clearing anymore, like MS, Adobe, and others.
- aloisdg 2y ago
  it is so easy to avoid Google analytics as a product developer nowadays that this is really a misplay (e.g. goatcounter, etc.)
  - liquidise 2y ago
    It is so easy to avoid GA as a web user that i’m surprised anyone concerned about this isn’t using an blocker that blocks GA scripts and requests themselves.
    - aloisdg 2y ago
      why not both?
clementpiki 2y ago
Without Analytics, I'm blind: I can't tell which feature are popular and which aren't. I need those infos to undertand where I should focus, what are users the more interested in. By "Privacy respected", I meant that I am not asking you for your email, your name, and what you do on the editor stays on your machine: no cloud uploads of your files.
- 2y ago

billconan 2y ago

but I think each browser tab has a memory limit of 4gb? this means a web based video editor can only work on short clips?

atum47 2y ago
Bump for interest
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
ffsm8 2y ago
Lots of factors at play that makes your assumption not necessarily correct. I.e. 1. Newer API such as directory access, which would let the app utilize something like swap as necessarily. And only ever loading the data it can currently handle from the filesystem (https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/File_System_API https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/File_System...) 2. Input doesn't necessarily have to be RAW/8k. You get several h of 1080p AV1 video within 4gb. I think it ultimately depends on how much effort the Devs wants to invest to support large video inputs. If none is invested, then your assumption would be true. I was unable to find the source code, so I wasn't able to check for myself. We'll have to wait for the author to chime in, if they're willing.
- rootlocus 2y ago
  1. Swapping to disk would kill the performance to an unnacceptable level. 2. I'm assuming video editing software works on a raw format in memory with access to individual frames? Just like Photoshop would need access to individual pixels from an importend JPEG, the actual canvas uses a lot more memory than the compressed input format.
  - clementpiki 2y ago
    That's correct, access to each pixel of each video frame is needed. Each video frame must be inflated from its codec compression.

bluelightning2k 2y ago

As a developer it's rare to see something which leaves me feeling "how would you even build something like that..." but this is one of those. Huge cudos for even attempting and following through with something like this!

suyash 2y ago
You start by building your knowledge around computer graphics and modern web development, basically WebGL and modern web APIs have made doing sophisticated graphic applications on the browser. Only limitation right now I see is single threaded limitation on the browser.
- ptsd_dalmatian 2y ago
  What about workers? Isn’t it basically the same as offloading computation heavy work to separate thread? Also, we have WebAssembly. Afaik, js threads can now share memory using SharedArrayBuffers. So I don’t think we have this single thread limitation anymore :)
  - noduerme 2y ago
    Idk about this specific app, but the main problem with workers is that any data their working on needs to be copied in or side-loaded into them once they spin up. I imagine for huge video files, having each worker load up a separate copy could be a bottleneck.
    - LoganDark 2y ago
      > the main problem with workers is that any data their working on needs to be copied in or side-loaded into them once they spin up Isn't this no longer an issue thanks to SharedArrayBuffer? https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/JavaScript/Reference/Global_Objects/SharedArrayBuffer https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/JavaScript/Refe... I believe the ONNX Runtime uses this for multithreading on the web, see https://github.com/nagadomi/nunif/issues/34 https://github.com/nagadomi/nunif/issues/34

baal80spam 2y ago

[flagged]

fragmede 2y ago
You can install it as a chrome app if that's a problem for you.
- latexr 2y ago
  Chrome Apps are suffering a slow death by Google. https://www.theverge.com/2020/1/15/21067907/google-chrome-apps-end-support-lune-windows-macos-linux https://www.theverge.com/2020/1/15/21067907/google-chrome-ap... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Chrome_App https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Chrome_App > Support for Chrome Apps in the Chrome Web Store was removed from Chrome in June 2022, except on ChromeOS where support has been extended until at least January 2025.
deleted 2y ago
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atum47 2y ago

I was well on my way to create a software like this [1], it started out as a flash clone, but since I didn't define any scope it started to look like after effects, on the back end I mean, never actually wrote a single line of code for the UI. Are you planning on creating a company out of this? Are you going to monetize it? 1 - https://m.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL3pnEx5_eGm9BbCp2ZTj6LTknue5guAL2 https://m.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL3pnEx5_eGm9BbCp2ZTj6LT...

Andrew_nenakhov 2y ago

Can you please clarify, which exactly key features are missing from Firefox that make this app say 'use Chrome or Edge'?

ayhanfuat 2y ago
From the FAQ: > Why no Firefox support Firefox is my daily web browser. As a web developper, I always make sure my work is comptatible with all major browsers. But you can guess a web based video editor is a complex task to achieve, and Pikimov uses several key features that only exist in Chrome, Edge, and maybe Opera, and maybe, maybe, Brave. That's why Pikimov cannot currently work on Firefox (as of today: v127), there's nothing I can do to fix this, it is just not possible. For the curious ones, here are some of the web API Pikimov requires, but are missing from Firefox: - audio data - window showsavefilepicker - videoencoder Note: There is no Safari support due to similar obstacles. https://pikimov.com/faq/ https://pikimov.com/faq/
- rom1v 2y ago
  For AudioData and VideoEncoder, it should be possible to enable webcodecs by setting dom.media.webcodecs.enabled to true in about:config. - https://github.com/mozilla/gecko-dev/blob/af09c55c0e6253ba8fcb69cf9534046405f4024d/dom/webidl/AudioData.webidl#L12 https://github.com/mozilla/gecko-dev/blob/af09c55c0e6253ba8f... - https://github.com/mozilla/gecko-dev/blob/af09c55c0e6253ba8fcb69cf9534046405f4024d/dom/webidl/VideoEncoder.webidl#L15 https://github.com/mozilla/gecko-dev/blob/af09c55c0e6253ba8f...
  - jampekka 2y ago
    For VideoEncoder at least there's also a polyfill using WASM compiled libav (aka ffmpeg). https://github.com/ennuicastr/libavjs-webcodecs-polyfill https://github.com/ennuicastr/libavjs-webcodecs-polyfill
AshleysBrain 2y ago
As I mentioned in another comment, in short, WebCodecs and File System Access API I believe. Both pretty essential for an app designed for editing large video files from disk.

dorkwood 2y ago

Is there an option for custom ease curves, like a graph editor? I love the idea of an After Effects alternative, but if it only has a few simple ease functions to choose from I can't see myself using it much, sadly.

clementpiki 2y ago
Not yet, but it has already been asked several times, so I'll keep that in mind. There's balance hard to find: should I try to make it as complete as AE, or make it a simpler so it's more accessible.
- alt227 2y ago
  If you are advertising it as an after effects alternative (which it looks like you are) then you should be trying to include all features that after effects has.
  - dewey 2y ago
    If most people use 20% of the features of an app, and you create an app that covers these most popular feature really well I think it's fair to call it an alternative. It doesn't say "full clone" or "feature parity".
    - clementpiki 2y ago
      I could not seriously pretend of a 'feature parity', if I can match 10% of features, that should good enough for most users. I'm not expecting the next Marvel movie to get its SFXs done with PIkimov.
      - antifa 2y ago
        The cool thing about the word alternative is that it does not mean "drop in replacement".

vlugorilla 2y ago

this is awesome. I hope some video editor comes up that can compete with Premiere. Then with pikimov and photopea, I could totally ditch Adobe for one. Have you considered open sourcing the app to benefit from contributors and build a community?

akanet 2y ago
There are many editors that compete with Premiere, which at this point is a janky unusable mess for me. Resolve has been a joy to work with.

whywhywhywhy 2y ago

Few realize that for many AE is the real jewel in the Adobe crown, Photoshop and Illustrator and Premier all have viable alternatives. AE however stands alone as the only tool with it's unique feature set. Yeah other compositing tools exist but they lack the animation/mograph tools of AE, or animation tools exist but lack the scripting/filters/compositing.

david033 2y ago

Nice, but too many animations/chaos on the landing page for my taste. Keep it simple.

jagged-chisel 2y ago

Can I export projects to use in other places? Or import projects from other places? Blender comes to mind. But also, I would like to use motion graphics in an app where the software engineers don't have to re-implement each asset in code.

elomad 2y ago

[dead]

alok-g 2y ago

Side comment: Comparing a web-based software that runs on your own computer vs. installing a (say native) software and frequently updating, isn't it interesting that the former is faster to do? When using a web-based software to ru on your own machine, you are effectively, momentarily, installing it and are able to uninstall by clearing the cache.

conception 2y ago
Well, it’s rarely “running” on your machine but is just a client for the server it is running on.
- sbarre 2y ago
  The app is client-side Javascript, it's most definitely "running" on your machine.
crazygringo 2y ago
And when you start a web app you might not even be "installing" 5% of the code, which is great for speed. You can load+interpret JavaScript files dynamically as the user accesses certain features.
whartung 2y ago
This is just a testament to the maturity of the platform, and the work that has gone into the portable engine segment. Targeting Chrome targets all of the platforms, and the machines and platform is "fast enough" to do the job without having to dig deep into specific nature of the platforms. It also leverages, I'm assuming, the deep knowledge the developer has of doing other things for the browser platform. They probably could have targeted some other portable GUI toolkit, but this was more familiar. It may well be an even smoother experience than using other cross platform GUI toolkits, plus, of course, the platform is free. Finally, distribution is familiar and likely easier, it's truly cross platform (no need to build executable on the individual platforms, even if its all from the same source base), etc. No bundling, no signing, no app stores. Just a URL shared in a tweet and you're on your way. If it was OSS, it could be parked on a Github page for all eternity. Overall, it's a really attractive platform for developers, just not yet fully embraced I think, as client based applications I mean.

kennydude 2y ago

Looks fantastic, and the comment about Photopea. Photopea is such a gem, and can't wait for their Vectorpea to launch as it's got me out of trouble so many times when I don't need an Adobe license for opening a file once a month or so (I just wish Photopea was OpenSource)

clementpiki 2y ago
You will be happy to learn vectorpea.com has been online for many monthes already
- kennydude 2y ago
  ah nice :) will have to give it a go someday when i need to deal with an illustrator file
deleted 2y ago
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anovc 2y ago

looks impressive! What are your plans for further development? I guess for this complex project to evolve in order to meet the needs of the professional users it will require lots of work/team/resources/etc. Do you plan to monetize it somehow in the future? or how are you going to sustain it? Another free alternative to AE (targeted at more casual users) that comes to mind is CapCut... which is obviously a ByteDance product. And they already offer tons of features for free, so the competition could be tough...

kypro 2y ago
Given it's free, it might be worth open source the project, or at least opening it up to community plugins so that community can build & fund additional functionality.

wdb 2y ago

Doesn‘t seem to work in Safari?

alfl23 2y ago

I really hope you charge money for it and make it awesome, it's about time Adobe gets disrupted and this is a wonderful idea! It will take significant resources, cash and teams to make this into a serious contender, and folks that have problems to solve will always be happy to pay decent dollars for great software.

majani 2y ago
He's clearly trying to follow the photopea playbook and make money through ads

martin-adams 2y ago

This is a very nice project and any competition to After Effects is very welcome. One model I'd love to see is a web based front end, but all video processing happens in the backend. Then ship the app as a combined front/backend, or just the front end that connects to a remote backend. That backend could be a server in a studio with beefed up specs, or offloaded to the cloud for solo animators working on complex projects. Seeing a project like this give me hope that we could decouple what the app does, vs how to control the app.

langitbiru 2y ago
A good idea is the backend or the cloud could be a paid feature for this application.
deleted 2y ago
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pier25 2y ago
This model would be great even for some desktop apps. Imagine you could offload rendering Blender projects to the cloud automatically.
- clementpiki 2y ago
  Don't they call it 'render farms'? I will add cloud features, I don't want to deal with massive files hosting. Maybe login box to G. Drive or 1Drive could be a solution.
  - pier25 2y ago
    Yes you can upload the whole project to a render farm etc. This can involve a lot of back and forth until the project renders correctly. But what I mean is clicking on the render button in your desktop app and have the work done remotely and everything solved automatically.
- martin-adams 2y ago
  It’s more subtle than that, imagine being able to edit a high poly count mesh on a low spec machine. So not just final rendering, but really the main application state. This is what something like After Effects could benefit from. When I tested a full ray-traced FPS demo in the browser and never noticed that the render was done server side, that’s when I believed this is possible.

mrbluecoat 2y ago

Very cool! Although other more complex open source solutions exist, for me the sweet spot between capable and not overwhelming is perfect. I prefer Photopea over Photoshop for that same reason (..just don't go crazy on the anti-adblocker like Photopea did)

tombert 2y ago
Which open source solutions exists as an alternative to After Effects?
- jdiff 2y ago
  AFAIK, the only thing that can even be stretched in a motion direction is Blender, but an AE alternative it is not.
- emigrantdd 2y ago
  also interested
- bibelo 2y ago
  I heard of Natron, looks promising but it seems slow https://natrongithub.github.io/ https://natrongithub.github.io/
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
gaudystead 2y ago
+1 for Photopea.com. I don't even bother with Adobe anymore. I just wish their subscription could be implemented on a usage basis instead of time based because I use it off and on but the ad blocking is occurring on the network level via a PiHole, and I'm not turning all of that off just to let them serve me ads for a couple hours once every couple months.

999900000999 2y ago

Any reason you couldn't bundle this into an Electron application? It's cool, and free. But what happens when you get bored and take the site down ?

KronisLV 2y ago
> Any reason you couldn't bundle this into an Electron application? I know people hate on Electron (sometimes rightfully so), but this does seem like a nice use case, meet your users wherever they are, even offline! As for when I need something native, Kdenlive is pretty nice: https://kdenlive.org/ https://kdenlive.org/ (it's FOSS, they could probably also use a donation https://kdenlive.org/en/fund/ https://kdenlive.org/en/fund/) Oh and DaVinci Resolve, even though effects aren't the main focus (it's a fully featured editing suite): https://www.blackmagicdesign.com/products/davinciresolve https://www.blackmagicdesign.com/products/davinciresolve
deleted 2y ago
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vunderba 2y ago
This is exactly why I would hands down always prefer an electron wrapped application over a web app if given a choice between the two. This is even more important if the app uses some kind of proprietary project file format, since if the website goes down you won't even be able to recover your project (without heavy reverse engineering potentially).
- clementpiki 2y ago
  You can find my answer about an electron version in the FAQ: https://pikimov.com/faq https://pikimov.com/faq

Rizu 2y ago

congrats op, would you mind sharing the techstack used in creating this

clementpiki 2y ago
You can find infos about the tech stack in the FAQ: https://pikimov.com/faq https://pikimov.com/faq

qingcharles 2y ago

This is amazing. I just installed AE yesterday after I decided that I needed to add "motion graphics creator" to my skillset in order to make decent Instagram stories. What's needed now is a page where people can share the templates they've created.

blueboo 2y ago

What would it take to support AE plugins? Nail that and you have something to make Adobe nervous.

jampekka 2y ago

Very impressive, and very needed. Current open source video editors uniformly suck. Glad to see browser technology being put to use. Browser is by far the best API for desktop applications too, despite the very common ignorant complaints on HN. Kudos!

lancesells 2y ago

Congrats OP! I don't have Chrome to test, but this is really nice from what I can see.

enobrev 2y ago

This is excellent! Several years ago I built a prototype of a video renderer on nodejs (v0.8-ish). It's a silly thing to do, rendering video in javascript (especially a decade ago), but it worked well enough to prove that it could be done and a startup pivot was born - one that was eventually acquired by Vimeo. While a colleague (and now friend) was working on porting my silly little renderer to C/C++ to try to get closer to real-time, I built out a UI to allow us to "templatize" dynamic video for our users. This made it possible for our designers to design the video experience for the videos that were dynamically generated for our users' content. That UI very much resembled Flash. Since then I've always wanted to do what you've done here. Before acquisition, I was asking our designers to walk me through how they use After Effects, in the hopes of building our tools in that direction, but then Vimeo showed up and... not too long after I left to start a travel startup. I haven't revisited the video space since. I love this. I _knew_ that it could be done - especially now that WASM is stable - and I'm excited to see someone has done it. And free, no less! Edit: Thought it was open source - thanks for the correction. Also I was way off on the node version.

wavewash 2y ago
It is free to use but not open source according to the faq: https://pikimov.com/faq/ https://pikimov.com/faq/
ramses0 2y ago
2006: Flash-based, online/web NLVE, focused on clipping / remixing (eg: "TikTok / Stitch Me"). https://techcrunch.com/wp-content/uploads/2006/04/jumpcut.gif https://techcrunch.com/wp-content/uploads/2006/04/jumpcut.gi... ...sadly, acquired by Yahoo, and you know what happened next. I can't find a lot of screenshots / video from the era, but the one above should give you a sense of it.

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InsideOutSanta 2y ago

Dang, the level of feature depth you've achieved here is amazing, and the UX is great if you have some experience with other video editors. This is definitely workable, at least for smaller projects.

itslennysfault 2y ago

What's that little blue bird icon in the top right corner? Seems to go to X, but I'm not sure why. ...jk! On a serious note, this is REALLY cool. Great job. Tiny feedback, your console is extremely chatty. I get this is a beta, but it still might be worth disabling that logging for production deploys. I hope to see this evolve into a commercial product I really think it fills a need and it seems to work incredibly well.

DonHopkins 2y ago
It's OK to deadname and misgender Twitter, because she's owned by Elon Musk, and it pisses him off to get a taste of his own medicine.
clementpiki 2y ago
As long as there are no red lines, the console can talk. On a serious not, this is a static page, I'm not worried about leaving breadcrumbs that could help mischiefs.

SillyUsername 2y ago

Where did you get the time to do this as a hobby? I spend evenings and weekends working on a project for the last 6 months and it's only half as good. 10x developer maybe, small team, millionaire? xD

clementpiki 2y ago
I had previous experience doing editors, and I am not ashamed to admit ChatGPT gave me a hand on some features I was not comfortable with, like editing audio in javascritt for example.
- ijidak 2y ago
  I'm curious. How long did this take?

emigrantdd 2y ago

Omg I've tried this it's really amazing. I see how many thing you did here, how many hours did u spend to build that?

doctorpangloss 2y ago

This is from my point of view as an experienced developer and VFX artist, including in-depth knowledge of AE. A 30fps limit is surprising 23.976 as an fps does not seem to be dealt with gracefully Clicking report bug should take me to a bug report form with info Interacting with "rectangle" is surprising because the corners aren't draggable. Probably should default to full size I should be able to wind input fields by clicking and dragging on them, such as for rotation When I drag keys around in the dope sheet, and let go with momentum, they appear to keep moving and "settle" in a sort of random place. They should not do that I see that this momentum behavior is also in the play head in the timeline. It really should not do that. Putting in a value in the dope sheet should be enabled, and it should automatically set a key I liked the visualizations of the easing, but it should probably be communicated with the keyframe's icon shape in the dope sheet like it does in AE. It is difficult to move a key to the beginning of the timeline. Architecturally, the preview rendering probably has to work the way it does in After Effects. Guaranteeing a real time visualization is pretty important. I kind of stopped there because it's a bunch of goal-less fiddling. This is really great, there is a tremendous amount of product development. Hopefully you will think deeply about your audience and objectives, and the amount of product development that goes into After Effects.

clementpiki 2y ago
Thank you for your feedback, the 30fps limit is temporary, until I have fully tested perfs with video files at a higher framerate can you tell me more about 'and let go with momentum', not sure what you mean? Is it about loss of precision, not being responsive, bad snapping to closest frame?
- mubu 2y ago
  Have you considered opening a staging or experimental branch on a subdomain perhaps? I think people would definitely be interested in testing out new features before they're released without hosting it themself, and I believe you said hosting Pikimov is very cheap.
- doctorpangloss 2y ago

1668911361 2y ago

First of all, this is really really cool! Great job! Would you consider building in support for color spaces into the software? It looks like the working color space is linear sRGB, but it'd be nice to at least know, and also support other color spaces as well. Frequently, when I'm rendering from blender, the raw renders will have out-of-gamut colors, which I'll then correct and bring back into sRGB when compositing.

clementpiki 2y ago
Tough question, yes I think all colors are converted to sRGB format

czhu12 2y ago

Having never used after effects, I would like to say that photopea has probably been my favorite piece of software in the last 10 years. I diligently disable Adblock on that website and have donated a few times in the past to support them. I hope to see many more alternatives on the market, and lend my support to anyone building!

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dinglestepup 2y ago

This is incredibly impressive! Both the UI and the feature set are fantastic.

clementpiki 2y ago
Thank you!

deweywsu 2y ago

Wonderful. You just "created" this?! This seems like it took many years and lots of hours. Great work!

mrandish 2y ago

Wow! This is wildly impressive and deeply inspiring - a truly incredible achievement. Even more unbelievable that it's by a solo dev. Please keep up the amazing work on this project. AE is powerful and feature rich but also bloated with decades of legacy code and niche professional use cases to support, so there's a huge need for what you've built. Not everyone is a high-end animator or special effects compositor. Many of us just want to make cool motion graphics for personal videos, social media and art projects. Based on the great response you've gotten so far, I'd suggest focusing on ways for the community to expand on what you've built with templates and plug-ins.

JackYoustra 2y ago

Just curious - why not open source? (really cool btw, super impressive)

aio2 2y ago

You're crazy. This is really cool.

green-eclipse 2y ago

Side note: I just wanted to comment on the variance of HN submission popularity. OP submitted this same amazing tool as a "Show HN" 20 days ago, with very similar title and shorter description [0]. It got no votes. Today this submission is climbing rapidly. Was the tool very different 20 days ago? I honestly don't know! But you never know how submissions will perform here. It feels pretty random, which makes sense, and also is part of the fun of HN. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40645009 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40645009

jrhizor 2y ago
It went viral on Twitter this weekend, which is probably why more people are noticing it now.
- ssahoo 2y ago
  Also never imagined "NO AI" to become a feature so soon.
- pvg 2y ago
  I saw it posted on HN by someone other than the author, noticed it had a recent show hn submission and emailed hn@ycombinator.com to see if it might be worth sending the author a repost invite. The author then reposted it.
  - clementpiki 2y ago
    Yes, I've been offered to repost it, with an updated description
fellerts 2y ago
If you see something you like that drowns in the new page, you can submit it to the second chance pool: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26998308 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26998308
flutas 2y ago
It's likely due to the time more than anything else. I have no insight into HNs peak active times, but posting right before them greatly increases the chance of a post taking off (works on other platforms too). My speculation is, more people check HN when first arriving at work to kick off the day, and that's why his post today is doing well vs the previous one.

NayamAmarshe 2y ago

This is amazing! I have not been able to find a good free AE alternative yet and this looks quite promising!

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richardfulop 2y ago

on another note if anyone is searching for an AE alternative for motion design I highly recommend Cavalry by Scenegroup

ihgdeb84865 2y ago

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jampekka 2y ago
The site looks fine and is very functional. I hope no UI designer or a quality template will ruin it.
audiodude 2y ago
I think the landing page looks fine and is functional, EXCEPT for the "bullet point" animated GIFs on the bottom. It should maybe come with a seizure warning?
preommr 2y ago
I'll also echo that the site looks fine. Very little can beat just clicking "get started" and dropping right into the tool.

bibelo 2y ago

Je suis franchement impressionné when I see a single person accomplishing that type of tremendous work! Keep up the good work

MoonObserver 2y ago

This is incredible work! Is a desktop version planned?

codelord 2y ago

I thought this is using AI so I was gonna dismiss it. But then saw the No AI sign and immediately signed up. Seriously though why is "No AI" a "feature" worth mentioning on top?

eamonobr 2y ago
Adobe had some clause where they could train AI based on your creative, effectively building a model that can ultimately plagiarize your work. No AI is a nice appeal in this context. That and it being simple, fully offline, not at the whims of execs trying to bump their share price with AI features that put the user second.
- codelord 2y ago
  I wish people stopped equating AI with Adobe's content policy.
  - kristiandupont 2y ago
    In this context that's a very reasonable assumption.
    - Qwertious 2y ago
      Yes, but 1) it's unnecessary conjecture when the facts already make them look bad, and 2) it's not the limit of what they could actually do - their TOS says (IIRC) "as long as it's for the purpose of improving our software, we can use anything you make". So they could use peoples' drawn art directly, for splash screens, or even, (speculation) offer it as a template/stock material for anyone who pays them for it. It's not just AI.
ttoinou 2y ago
Doesn’t your behavior prove the point of showing No AI ?
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fallinditch 2y ago

This is great, I'm not a frequent video editor but I can see myself using it.

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multi_tude 2y ago

As a motion designer, I'm curious what features does this has that AE doesn't.

peteforde 2y ago
I'd say that the main feature is that it lacks a subscription payment requirement.
- clementpiki 2y ago
  Nice one

holoduke 2y ago

NoAI will be the new "no sugar" buzz

jk_harun 2y ago

used it and its freaking brilliant. please keep improving it. i want to go away from adobe cursed products

hpen 2y ago

Would anyone use a macOS native animation editor?

k1ns 2y ago

This is truly incredible. I want to remind everyone about Blender's humble beginnings. Great work, I look forward to seeing your product pop back up as others discover it.

set3 2y ago

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set3 2y ago

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set3 2y ago

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BeFlatXIII 2y ago

Looks like it's Chromium-only for now. Not for Firefox and Safari enjoyers.

verbalstoner 2y ago

This seems like an awesome project, but for the love of God, why did you use JavaScript when you are obviously capable of making it in a decently performant low-level language like C or Rust? Browser apps have such terrible performance; I just don't understand your choice of framework.

DidYaWipe 2y ago

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ijidak 2y ago

How long did this take to build? I know I read below that you used ChatGPT, which is great. We're going to see more amazing work across the board because of ChatGPT and tools like it.

SilentM68 2y ago

Great app, but I wish it was available as a desktop app, similar to Natron, rather than just online. Some people may not have the capability to access the app online.

hpen 2y ago
Would you use a macOS native application for 2d animations?

archon810 2y ago

Pikimov sounds like some russian guy's name. An odd name for a project.