Motion Canvas

Motion Canvas is two things:

• A TypeScript library that uses generators to program animations.
• An editor providing a real-time preview of said animations.

It's a specialized tool designed to create informative vector animations and synchronize them with voice-overs.

Aside from providing the preview, the editor allows you to edit certain aspects of the animation which could otherwise be tedious.

Using Motion Canvas

Check out our getting started guide to learn how to use Motion Canvas.

Developing Motion Canvas locally

The project is maintained as one monorepo containing the following packages:

| Name | Description | | ------------- | -------------------------------------------------------------- | | core | All logic related to running and rendering animations. | | 2d | The default renderer for 2D motion graphics | | create | A package for bootstrapping new projects. | | docs | Our documentation website. | | e2e | End-to-end tests. | | examples | Animation examples used in documentation. | | player | A custom element for displaying animations in a browser. | | template | A template project included for developer's convenience. | | ui | The user interface used for editing. | | vite-plugin | A plugin for Vite used for developing and bundling animations. |

After cloning the repo, run npm install in the root of the project to install all necessary dependencies. Then run npx lerna run build to build all the packages.

Developing Core & 2D

When developing the core, start both core:watch and template:serve.

This will pick up any changes you make to the core package, automatically rebuild the template project and refresh the page.

Similarly, when developing the 2D package, start 2d:watch and template:serve.

Developing UI

If you want to develop the UI, first build the template project by running: template:build. Next, start ui:serve.

Developing Player

Like with UI, to develop the player, first build the template: template:build. Then, start player:serve.

Contributing

Read through our Contribution Guide to learn how you can help make Motion Canvas better.