About Lightningbeam

Lightningbeam is a free, open-source multimedia editor that brings vector animation, audio production, and video editing together in a single application.

Instead of bouncing between a drawing program, a DAW, and a video editor — exporting, importing, and losing your creative flow along the way — Lightningbeam lets you stay in one place. Compose a soundtrack while watching your animation play back in real time. Sync your drawings to the beat without the export-import dance. Create an animated music video, a short film with an original score, or game-ready sprites with matching sound effects — all without leaving the app.

Why Lightningbeam?

Most creative software forces you to choose: animate here, edit audio there, stitch it together somewhere else. Every tool switch is a context switch. Every context switch is a small interruption to the creative process.

Lightningbeam exists because these media types don't have to live in separate worlds. When animation, audio, and video share the same timeline — the same project, the same workflow — things become possible that simply aren't when they're apart.

Features

Vector Animation — Draw and animate vector shapes with keyframe-based timelines, shape morphing, bezier curves, and a full set of drawing tools. Work non-destructively with multiple layers.

Audio Production — A full digital audio workstation with multi-track recording, MIDI sequencing, synthesizers, samplers, and a modular node-graph effects system with over 70 node types. Audio isn't an afterthought — it's built into the core.

Video Editing — Import, arrange, and edit video on the same timeline as your animation and audio. Compose all your media together in one place.

GPU-Accelerated Effects — Apply shader-based visual effects to any layer type — vector, video, or raster — with real-time preview.

Flexible Workspaces — Switch between layout presets optimized for animation, video editing, or audio production, or build your own.

On the Roadmap

Lightningbeam is designed to grow. Here's what's coming:

• Raster animation layers — Frame-by-frame bitmap drawing with onion skinning, composited alongside vector and video layers
• Expanded video editing — Transitions, color grading, compositing, speed ramping, and proxy workflows
• Bones and rigging — Skeletal animation with inverse kinematics, weight painting, and pose libraries for character work
• HTML5 export — Export interactive projects for the web with scripting support, opening the door to 2D game development

The Story So Far

Lightningbeam has been a long time coming. It started in 2010 as Swift, a Python-based animation program inspired by Adobe Flash — software I wanted to use but couldn't afford. Around the same time, I began work on FreeJam, a GarageBand-inspired DAW born out of frustration with the audio tools available on Linux.

Both projects taught me a lot, but neither reached maturity on its own. Over the years I realized I was writing similar code for both — timelines, keyframes, playback engines — and that combining them could open up creative possibilities that neither could offer alone. That realization became Lightningbeam.

The current version, rebuilt from the ground up in Rust with GPU-accelerated rendering, has been in active development since November 2023.

Current Status

Lightningbeam is in active, early-stage development. The core architecture is solid and many features are functional, but it isn't ready for general use yet. If you're curious about the technical details or want to follow along, the full source code is available on GitHub.

About Me

I'm Skyler, and I've been building Lightningbeam because I wanted one app where I could animate and compose music without constantly exporting between tools. What started as two separate projects has become a single vision for what an integrated creative tool can be.

Support the Project

Want to help fund development? Support Lightningbeam on Ko-fi.

Want to know when it's ready?