Keyframe
Open studio

No plug-ins needed: why Keyframe builds its features into the editor

Design note

Many of After Effects’ features come from third-party plug-ins; Keyframe builds them into the editor, so a project opens the same on any computer.

In After Effects, plug-ins fill many gaps

Particles, character rigging and your own shaders usually mean installing a third-party plug-in or script.

After Effects

  • Trapcode Particularparticles, a third-party plug-in
  • Duikcharacter rigging, a third-party script
  • PixelsWorldyour own shaders, a third-party plug-in
  • Another computer without themthe effect becomes a “Missing” placeholder; the layer renders without it

Keyframe

  • Particles and simulationsbuilt in, computed on the graphics card
  • Skeletons and mesh skinninga layer type
  • Shaders and picture programsproject data, travelling with the project
  • Another computeropens in any browser with WebGPU

When After Effects opens a project that uses plug-ins it doesn’t have, it lists the missing effects, keeps each as a “Missing” placeholder with its settings, and renders the layer without it. The project opens, but the picture is no longer what it was.

Why it works that way

A closed core handed extension to a plug-in ecosystem, which is also After Effects’ strength.

Outside developers can’t change After Effects’ core, so new features arrived as plug-ins and scripts, and many became industry standards. That huge ecosystem lets After Effects do almost anything; it is its real strength.

The cost is that features are spread across many vendors: each plug-in installed and updated on its own, and whether a project opens as it was depends on what this computer has.

In Keyframe: features built into the editor

Particles, tracking, keying, rigging and program effects are the editor’s own features.

A clip of a small card drifting up and to the right, tracked: the track point sits on the card with its path drawn behind it, and a round shape follows it. The Tracker panel is open on the right.
  1. Adds a tracker to the selected video layer.
  2. What the tracker follows and how it is applied.
  3. Track one frame, or to the end, backward or forward.
  4. The layer the track moves.
  5. Writes the track as keyframes on the target.
  6. The track point and its path: the feature region, the search region and the attach point.
  • Tracking. Point and planar tracking, mask tracking (faces too), Warp Stabilizer, Content-Aware Fill and the 3D Camera Tracker.
  • Keying and roto. Keying effects, Roto Brush and Refine Edge.
  • Particles and simulations. Particle World runs in a compute pass on the graphics card.
  • Bones and programs. Skeletons, mesh skinning, and shader, simulation and picture programs.

Not reinventing the wheel

The hard algorithms come from mature open-source libraries, behind Keyframe’s own adapters.

  • Mature libraries. Tracking and analysis use OpenCV.js and MediaPipe, filling backgrounds uses LaMa; their files are served from Keyframe’s own servers with integrity checks and run on your device, and the fill model downloads only when you first use it.
  • Swap a library, keep the project. Each library sits behind an adapter; replacing it doesn’t touch saved projects.
  • Results saved as data. A track is written as keyframes or an analysis record checked against its footage; a simulation depends only on its parameters and the frame, however you got there.

What this gives up

No plug-in interface means no third-party plug-ins, and there are still fewer effects than in After Effects.

Leaving out a plug-in SDK and scripting is deliberate: the Agent⁠ (opens in a new tab) and the interface share one set of registered operations, and what is missing we build ourselves. After Effects has far more effects today, a gap we will close one by one, and the editor runs only in browsers with WebGPU.

Still behind After Effects

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