Making something move in Forge

Getting started

Open the editor and you'll land on a single Background layer. Everything in Forge is built by stacking layers — images, video, text, or solid colors — and then applying effects to any of them.

Nothing happens automatically. A new layer arrives with no effects and inherits nothing from the layer above it. What you see is only what you've deliberately added — that's a deliberate rule, not a limitation, so you always know exactly why something looks the way it does.

Layers

Use the toolbar's + Image, + Video, + Text, and + Solid buttons to add layers. They stack top to bottom in the left panel, the same as most compositing tools — layers higher in the list draw on top.

Click a layer to select it. The right panel becomes that layer's inspector: position, scale, rotation, opacity, blend mode, and its own effect stack. Drag a selected layer directly on the canvas to move it, or use the handles to scale and rotate.

Each layer also has a lock and a visibility toggle in the layer list, for working on one part of a composition without the rest getting in the way.

Effects

With a layer selected, open the inspector's effect section and pick something from the add-effect menu. Effects are grouped by what they do — Light, Texture, Structure, Distortion, Generative — and each one lands on the layer as its own card with its own parameters.

Stack as many as you like; they apply in order, top to bottom, and each is non-destructive — turn any of them off, reorder them, or delete one without touching the rest. There's also a composition-wide effect stack (select "Composition" instead of a layer) for anything that should apply to the whole frame at once, after every layer is composited together.

Built one look you like? Use Copy stack at the bottom of a layer's effects, then Paste on another layer to reuse it instantly.

Animating a parameter

Every slider in Forge can move on its own — you don't need to hand-animate anything. Next to each parameter are two small buttons:

• ◆ drops a keyframe at the playhead. Set different values at different points in time and Forge eases between them.
• ∿ attaches an oscillator — the value swings continuously on a wave (sine, triangle, square, and others), with its own speed and amount. This is the fastest way to make something feel alive without touching the timeline at all.

Both can be used on the same parameter at once — a keyframed path with an oscillator riding on top of it.

Reacting to audio

Click ♪ Audio in the toolbar and load a track. Once it's loaded, every parameter gets a third button — ♪ — next to the keyframe and oscillator ones. Turn it on, pick a band (bass, mids, highs, overall level, or detected beats), and that parameter now moves with the music.

Worth knowing: this drives what you see while you work, but the exported video is currently silent — add your track back in afterward if you're posting with sound. And because audio files are too large to save, you'll reload the track each time you reopen a project.

Saving your work

Forge doesn't restore your last session automatically — every fresh visit starts clean, with the option to restore an unsaved session if one exists. To actually keep something, use Save in the toolbar to store a named project in this browser, or Download .forge for a portable file you can move between machines. Open shows every project you've saved, with a thumbnail, ready to reload.

Images are embedded directly in a saved project, so they come back exactly as you left them. Video and audio aren't — those files are too large to store — so you'll re-add them after reopening a project that used either.

Exporting

Click Export to open the export dialog: choose MP4 or WebM, a resolution multiplier up to 3×, a frame rate, and a duration. Forge renders frame by frame rather than trusting real-time playback, so the exported file stays accurate even on a heavy effect stack.

One honesty note: true MP4 depends on what your browser supports. Where it isn't available, Forge falls back to WebM automatically and tells you it did — rather than handing you a WebM quietly renamed to .mp4.

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