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.

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

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

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.

When developing the editor, run the following command:

npm run template:dev

It will start a vite server that watches the core, 2d, ui, and vite-plugin packages. The template package itself contains a simple Motion Canvas project that can be used during development.

To develop the player, first build the template: npm run template:build. Then, start npm run player:dev.

It can be useful to install a local version of Motion Canvas in a standalone project. For example, when you want to use your own fork with some custom-made features to create your animations.

Let's assume the following project structure:

projects/
├── motion-canvas/ <- your local monorepo
└── my-project/ <- a bootstrapped project
    └── package.json

You can link the local packages from the monorepo by updating the package.json of your project. Simply replace the version with a file: followed by a relative path to the package you want to link:

  "dependencies": {
-   "@motion-canvas/core": "^3.11.0",
+   "@motion-canvas/core": "file:../motion-canvas/packages/core",
    // ...
  },

If you're linking the ui package, you'll also need to modify vite.config.ts to allow vite to load external files:

import {defineConfig} from 'vite';
import motionCanvas from '@motion-canvas/vite-plugin';

export default defineConfig({
  server: {
    fs: {
      // let it load external files
      strict: false,
    },
  },
  plugins: [motionCanvas()],
});

This is necessary because the editor styles are loaded using the /@fs/ prefix and since the linked ui package is outside the project, vite needs permission to access it.

Then run npm install in to apply the changes and that's it.

You can use the same technique to test out any custom package you're working on.

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