I built the core of the animation engine, and I think our wording may have created the wrong impression about how it was developed.
For the use case we have, we needed a fast animation engine. The engine didn’t begin as a port or rewrite of Manim. We originally built it under a different name as a standalone Rust/WebGPU 3D animation engine for real-time AI tutoring. I spent roughly two months building the renderer and animation system from scratch.
Our original engine had a different interface, different defaults and produced different visual results. Only after the engine was already working did we decide to make part of its Python interface compatible with ManimCE. We did that because many users already know the Manim API, and coding models are already familiar with its classes and common animation patterns. We spent substantial time matching ManimCE’s visual behavior as closely as possible. We believe this compatibility layer makes adoption easier; yet the underlying renderer, scene system, and implementation are our own.
So describing this as vibe coding Manim in Rust and then closing the source is inaccurate. The browser editor, rendering, and video downloads are free. You are free to write code, render and download videos as much as you want. The paid features are the AI-powered functionality, which are priced to cover their cost to us.
We respect that some people would prefer it to be open-source, but choosing not to open-source an independently developed engine is different from taking an open-source project and repackaging it as proprietary software.
In that case you shouldn't call it Manim or "3Blue1Brown's animation engine". At best this has a partly Manim-compatible API, similar to how XY [1] has a partly Matplotlib-compatible API.
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49085798
We are fully compatible with Manim CE. Our goal is 1:1 API compatibility, so people can continue using the API they already know.
We never intended to use 3Blue1Brown's name in a negative or misleading way. We simply wanted to communicate that we have made the Manim API created by 3Blue1Brown accessible in the browser with WebGPU, without requiring any installation.
> We never intended to use 3Blue1Brown's name in a negative or misleading way
You submitted this with the title “Manim (3Blue1Brown's animation engine) in the browser via WebGPU”
Being misleading is exactly what you intended to do.
Such bad faith here.. Rip off and then caught (inevitable, because most on HN likely love the original), then backpedal like crazy when called out
> So describing this as vibe coding Manim in Rust and then closing the source is inaccurate.
Your team submitted this with the title “Manim (3Blue1Brown's animation engine) in the browser via WebGPU”
If anyone is being misleading, it’s your team.
Maybe manim should not have used MIT as the license in the first place, since the license permits it.