One free app for the skills behind games, film, theater, music and design. Students build by pushing, pulling and painting in the viewport, and watch the node canvas fill in with every step they take.
Kinematic covers the hands-on work behind games, film, theater, concerts, museums and music. For each course: what students make, what they do in the app, and where it can lead.
From a ball of clay to a character walking across the screen.
Fits courses inGame art, film and animation, architecture, product design
Buildings, furniture, props and whole sets for games and film.
In KinematicPick a face and pull it out, cut and bevel edges, mirror one half, and copy parts into place. Every move stays open to change.
Creatures, heroes, busts and toys to pose, print or put in a game.
In KinematicStart from a ball and push, pull and carve it. With a pen, pressing harder digs deeper. Then paint color right onto the surface.
Walks, hops, dances and falls, from a bouncing ball to a whole character.
In KinematicDrag a character into a pose, press Key, and drag the arc of the motion until it looks right. Or act it out on a webcam and put the moves on the character.
Product shots, turntables, and walkthroughs of buildings before they are built.
In KinematicBring a model in at its real size, put materials on it, light it with a sun and sky, and render stills, turntables and walkthrough videos.
Fire, water, cloth, and graphics that move.
Fits courses inFilm and visual effects, motion design, broadcast
Fire, smoke, pouring water, cloth and things breaking apart, for film, games and ads.
In KinematicPick a shape and add fire, smoke, liquid or cloth from the Simulate menu. Press Play, then change the flame or the splash while it runs.
Title sequences, logo animations, social clips and broadcast graphics.
In KinematicScatter thousands of copies and push them with noise, key a bounce on the timeline, and set type in their own font. It plays live, so the frame they tweak is the frame they send out.
The editing work every studio, newsroom and shop needs.
Fits courses inPhotography, film and media, graphic design
Landscapes, portraits, product shots on white and real estate listings.
In KinematicDrag a box to crop, click Sky and the sky is picked for them, then warm it, heal the specks and clone out a wire, right on the picture.
Short films, interviews, music videos, and a look for every shot.
In KinematicCut clips on the timeline, steady a shaky walk, paint a passing bus out of a shot, then find the look with curves, color wheels and scopes.
Posters, social sets, badges and print files.
In KinematicLay type and shapes over a photo, fill a word with a sunset, and save one design at every size for web and print.
The tech behind plays, concerts, museums and clubs.
Fits courses inTheater tech, live events, fine art and installation
Lighting for plays, dance and concerts, with cues that run the whole show.
In KinematicPick lights from the library and give them addresses, build a look in the programmer, record it as a cue with a fade, and press GO through the show.
Pictures that wrap a building, a column or a whole room, and pieces that react to the people walking past.
In KinematicDrag the four corners of a picture onto a wall, bend it around a column, and blend two projectors into one wide picture. A webcam can make the room react.
Visuals for concerts, clubs and video walls that move with the music.
In KinematicStack feedback, kaleidoscopes and glitches, let the kick drum push them, and play it all from the MIDI controller they already own.
Record it, shape it, play it, and let it move the picture.
Fits courses inMusic technology, audio production, game and film sound
Sound effects, ambiences and voice for games, film and theater.
In KinematicRecord a take, draw a range on the waveform, and trim, cut, clean and level it. Then layer synths and grains under it, and lay it under the picture.
Beats, songs, synth patches and scores.
In KinematicWrite notes in the piano roll, record takes from a keyboard, build a synth or a drum machine from parts, and mix with real dynamics.
Beginners learn fastest with their hands on the work. So they start in the viewport, right on the model or the picture. Every move lands on the node canvas as a step, and the canvas becomes the map of how their piece was made.
Pull out a face, paint a stroke, drag a corner. The model or the picture changes under the pointer, so each tool explains itself.
Each one lands on the canvas, in order, with a plain name. Undo takes back one step at a time.
Click a step and the viewport shows the work as it was right there. Change it, and everything after it follows.
Later, the same canvas lets them reuse a step, swap one out, or let a slider, a sound or a camera drive it.
viewportcanvasstep listEach plan starts in the viewport and ends with students opening the canvas to see what they made. Run one in a single session, then let them keep going in the course that hooked them.
They leave witha creature of their own, painted and ready to pose, print or share.
Then open the canvasThe ball they started from is still there as the first step, with the sculpting and the paint after it.
They leave witha burning shape they can light, tune and render.
Then open the canvasThe shape and the fire sit side by side as steps. Swap in another shape and the same fire burns it.
They leave witha night sky that glows, with the hills left as they were.
Then open the canvasBoth changes read the one sky selection, so a better selection improves both at once.
They leave witha projection that sits on real objects, ready for an open day.
Then open the canvasEach picture feeding the mapper is its own step. Swap one for a video or a live camera.
They leave witha clean, level take, saved as a sound file.
Then open the canvasThe take, the cleanup, the cut and the level sit in a row, in the order they made them.
Longer step-by-step lessons for each area are in the docs, from a first picture to lighting, particles and sound.
Read the lessons in the docsThe tool they learn on is the tool they make real work with.
A class can be taught around it, and the skills travel with the students after they graduate, onto their own laptops and their own work.
Free for the whole room.Every feature on every machine. No node limit, no resolution cap, no watermark on what students make.
Opens everywhere.macOS on Apple Silicon, Windows and Linux, with experimental Raspberry Pi support. A project made on a lab Mac opens on a student's Windows laptop.
Runs on what they have.A laptop graphics card from the last six years is enough. Most tools also run on the processor, so projects still work without a strong graphics card.
Their work goes with them.A project is a folder on disk, in standard formats such as PNG, WAV, glTF and OBJ. The projects students build keep working after they graduate.
More than 400 demos come with the app. Each one is a finished piece and its recipe at once, so students can see how it was made and make it their own.
A column of water lets go, slams the far wall and sloshes back. One step runs the whole splash, so it is the place to start changing things.
A rigged fox comes in from a file with its skin and its animation. The clip plays on a loop while a camera circles it.
A synth front panel with a keyboard, an envelope, dials, a scope and a level meter. A good start for a panel of their own.
Install it the same way everywhere. Then check, run and render class work from the command line, with no window open.
Download, unzip, run. Do the same on each machine. There is nothing to activate and no server to set up.
Before the first command-line run, a person accepts the license on that account, in a terminal or by opening Kinematic once. No flag or script can do it for them, so do it while you set the machine up.
kinematic batch opens and checks every graph in a folder. kinematic render writes a piece to a video file. kinematic run runs a graph with no window and exits with its result.
--kiosk fills the screen, hides the editor, turns the editing keys off and keeps the machine and its screens awake. --display 1 picks the second screen. Ctrl+Shift+Q quits. --restart-on-panic 5 brings it back after a crash. --perform runs the same show without the lock.
On macOS, add Kinematic to Login Items. On Linux and Raspberry Pi, use a .desktop autostart entry.
# check every graph in a folder $ kinematic batch class-work/ # render one piece to a video, no window $ kinematic render piece.kin -o piece.mp4 # open day: fullscreen on the projector $ kinematic show.kin --kiosk --display 1
Raspberry Pi support is experimental. Try the piece on the board itself before the day.
Every flag is listed in kinematic --help.
Kinematic works with a screen reader and from the keyboard alone. Each setting is off until you turn it on, under Preferences > Appearance > Accessibility.
How it works, step by stepSetting up a lab, a lesson that went sideways, or a course you built on Kinematic. We would like to hear about it.
Reach out$ kinematic report --graph piece.kin
No account, no license key. macOS, Windows, Linux and Raspberry Pi.