flatrender/services/remotion/docs/PREMIUM_TOOLCHAIN.md

FlatRender — Premium Template Toolchain (stop-motion · paper-cut · premium)

From the premium-video-toolchain research sweep (6 finders). Goal: raise template quality beyond hand-coded art, for a Persian-first paid SaaS that renders editable templates to MP4 server-side, on Remotion + After Effects engines.

The diagnosis

The quality cap isn't the engines — it's the AI hand-authoring the art in code at render time. Clean vector motion is what code does well; stop-motion / paper-cut live on texture, handmade imperfection, real shadows, layered materials — artist/asset driven. Fix = change where the artistry comes from, keep the editable layer in code.

The load-bearing constraint: Iran access is the dominant filter (not quality)

Every frontier AI tool is OFAC-blocked at signup AND payment — US (Runway, Sora, Veo, Luma, Pika, Kaiber) and Chinese (Kling, Seedance). The aggregators (fal.ai, Replicate) are US/Stripe-billed → same wall. There is no direct payable-from-Iran path to any hosted model. Two viable routes:

• Self-host open weights → zero OFAC exposure (nothing paid to a US co. at render). The ONLY thing that can sit in the live, on-demand server render.
• Acquire-once via a non-Iran intermediary → batch-generate clips → vendor the MP4 under the existing assets.json licence firewall (the output licence is perpetual; the service access is not). Exactly the asset/audio-library pattern.

The architecture (this is the whole answer)

An AI clip is never the template — it's moving wallpaper. Three layers:

L1  BACKDROP   baked AI clip / textured render / Lottie  (no editable text)
L2  EDITABLE   text · logo · colours · images  → Remotion inputProps / AE bind.jsx
L3  RENDER     composite → MP4 (Remotion OffthreadVideo or Three VideoTexture; AE footage layer)

Rules: bake backdrops at the comp's fps/aspect; keep them dark/low-contrast/abstract so editable type stays legible; colour lives in the overlay, not the AI footage. This is how premium + editability coexist — and it maps onto our two engines directly.

Per style — the recommended approach

Style	Approach	Tools
Stop-motion	Frame-step ("on twos" / posterizeTime / reduced fps) + per-frame jitter + paper/grain overlay. Pika's first/last-frame keying is "stop-motion-native".	Remotion code (free) · Blender (grease pencil / sim) · Pika (acquire-once) · Wan 2.2 LoRA
Paper-cut	Layered Z-planes + real cast shadows + depth in @remotion/three; CC0 paper normal/displacement maps; SVG feTurbulence for organic edges.	@remotion/three (free) · ambientCG / Poly Haven (CC0) · Recraft (paper-cut image gen)
Premium motion	A shared finish pass (film grain + DOF + bloom + LUT colour grade) + HDRI lighting + artist Lottie + custom illustration.	@react-three/postprocessing (free) · Poly Haven HDRI · @remotion/lottie · FLUX+LoRA

The tool stack (priority order)

Free + Iran-safe (do first — biggest ROI, zero licensing/OFAC risk, in our engine):

1. @remotion/lottie + @remotion/paths — artist-made Lottie animations + path morphing. (lottie still NOT installed — flagged repeatedly.)
2. Craft primitives — a reusable kit: frame-stepping, jitter, paper-cut planes+shadows, grain.
3. @react-three/postprocessing finish pass — grain/DOF/bloom/vignette + LUT. One shared component lifts everything.
4. CC0 PBR textures + HDRI — ambientCG, Poly Haven (paper, cardboard, fabric, light leaks, lighting).

Self-host (Iran-safe, GPU needed — the live-render upgrade): 5. FLUX + LoRA (image) / SDXL — generate style-locked per-scene illustration; LoRA locks a paper-cut/clay/brand style. Permissive licences, runs offline. 6. Wan 2.2 (Alibaba, Apache-2.0, video, ~RTX 4090) — the only video model that can be in the live pipeline from Iran; I2V from your own style still; LoRA-trainable. 7. Blender (free) — grease pencil 2D, paper-cut rigs, stop-motion sims; render → backdrop.

Acquire-once via non-Iran intermediary (premium hero clips only, vendor the MP4): 8. Kling (best stylized I2V from a still) · Seedance 2.0 (best multi-ref consistency — up to 9 refs) · Pika (keyframe stop-motion). Paid plans grant commercial use; vendor outputs + ledger them. (Kling retains a backdoor licence to your generated content — fine for backdrops.)

Reference-only / blocked: Adobe Firefly, OpenAI/Sora (OFAC + payment); Envato/Storyblocks AE packs (redistribution/competing-service clauses + payment).

Consistency lever (critical for multi-scene)

Image-to-video + reference images, not text-to-video — animate your style-locked still so the model never reinvents the look. LoRA training locks a character/style across scenes. Seed every scene from the same reference.

Trends to ride (2025–2026)

Craft revival (stop-motion/paper-cut as luxury) · the baked-backdrop + editable-overlay pattern · I2V + reference for consistency · self-hosted open weights (sovereignty + Iran) · LoRA + seed style-lock · a centralized finish pass.

Phased plan

• P0 — install @remotion/lottie + @remotion/paths. (free, immediate)
• P1 — build the craft-primitives kit (frame-step, jitter, paper-cut planes, grain). (free)
• P2 — a shared FinishPass (postprocessing + LUT). (free)
• P3 — vendor CC0 PBR textures + HDRI (ambientCG / Poly Haven). (free, VPN fetch)
• P4 — curate + vendor Lottie / asset packs behind the licence gate.
• P5 — stand up FLUX + LoRA self-host for style-locked illustration. (GPU)
• P6 — the backdrop architecture end-to-end (AI/asset clip → editable AE/Remotion overlay → render cache).
• P7 — self-host Wan 2.2 (video) + Blender (stop-motion/paper-cut sims). (GPU)

Bottom line: P0–P3 are free, Iran-safe, in our existing Remotion engine, and raise quality immediately. The AI tier (P5–P7) is a self-hosted-weights play because of OFAC — Wan 2.2 + FLUX are the sovereignty path; hosted models are acquire-once-and-vendor.