EffectCraft

EffectCraft is a motion graphics and compositing app for designers making animated titles, layered effects and Lottie animations.

An After Effects workflow, with a different project format

EffectCraft is one of the ArtCraft team's creative applications, and it can be installed on its own. It follows the familiar composition-and-timeline workflow: add text, shapes or footage as layers, animate their properties, apply effects and render the result. The Project, Composition, Timeline and Effect Controls panels are intended to feel familiar to After Effects users.

The important boundary is compatibility. Familiar controls do not mean existing Adobe projects will open. EffectCraft saves versioned JSON files with the .ecproj extension; it cannot read .aep or .aepx projects, and After Effects plug-ins do not run in it. An animation that depends on those files or plug-ins needs to be rebuilt or kept in its original application.

What you can build on the timeline

• Animated titles and lower thirds: point or paragraph text, installed fonts, text animators and range selectors let you animate lettering alongside other layers.
• Layered compositions: text, shapes, footage, solids and nested compositions can be combined with parenting, masks, track mattes, adjustment layers and blend modes.
• Controlled movement: linear, hold and Bezier keyframes, Easy Ease, and value or speed curves in the Graph Editor provide control over timing. Time remapping, stretching and freeze frames are also documented.
• Effects and expressions: the project lists blur, color correction, distortion, keying, particles and time effects. JavaScript expressions include familiar operations such as wiggle, loopOut and references to other layers.
• 3D compositions: layers can be positioned with cameras, depth of field and lights, including soft shadows. This is a compositing workflow built around layers and cameras.

The official interface image shows the team's demo composition, with separate title, tagline, rings, controller and background layers. It is an example supplied by the developers, rather than a render or usability test performed by Seailife.

Lottie, video and reusable project files

Lottie is an animation format used by websites and apps. EffectCraft includes import and export for it, so a composition can be saved as Lottie JSON or a .lottie file without a separate export plug-in. Supported export elements include shape, image, text and null layers, nested compositions, keyframes, masks and track mattes. The exporter reports elements that Lottie cannot represent; check those warnings before expecting the web animation to match the composition.

For video, the documented Render Queue includes H.264 MP4, ProRes MOV, HEVC, AV1 and WebM. ProRes and supported WebM output can retain transparency; image-sequence options include PNG and EXR. A transparent title overlay and a web animation therefore have different export paths, even when they start from the same timeline.

The readable JSON project format also makes changes easier to inspect in version control. A command-line tool can render a saved composition, while an MCP server exposes project, property, keyframe and render operations to agents. These are documented automation interfaces, not a promise that a prompt will produce a finished animation without review.

Where the alpha still needs caution

The official repository dates the first commit to October 1, 2026 and labels the application alpha. The team explicitly says it is not yet a replacement for After Effects on client work. Features being present does not establish matching output: automated comparisons against After Effects renders have not yet been made.

• Existing AE projects and third-party plug-ins are incompatible, so this is easier to evaluate with a new, small composition than a production project migration.
• macOS is the most tested platform. The team reports basic interaction bugs from Windows and Linux users. Windows ARM64 installation checks do not yet amount to native GUI and full test-suite validation.
• On native Linux Wayland sessions, file drag-and-drop is limited by the windowing backend. The repository recommends the File Import menu or running through XWayland.
• Roto Brush and face tracking have optional model downloads. The team has not compared these implementations with After Effects, so their presence should not be treated as equivalent results.

Getting it from the right source

The official download page offers an ArtCraft Launcher for installation and updates, plus standalone builds. The browser version is distributed as a WebAssembly build that can be hosted on a static server. Third-party sites may host that build, but they are separate from the official project.

The application is available under MIT or Apache-2.0 licensing. Bundled assets retain their own licenses, and ArtCraft branding has separate terms. Designers curious about a new animation tool can try a short title or Lottie composition first, then inspect the exported result before committing to a larger workflow.