DotLottie

Lottie (file format)

Lottie (file format)

File format for vector graphics animations

Lottie is a file format for vector graphics animation, and is named after Charlotte "Lotte" Reiniger, a German pioneer of silhouette animation.[1]

Quick Facts Filename extension, Developed by ...
Lotte Reiniger in 1939

Description

Lottie is based in JSON but Lottie files use keys of 1–2 characters in length and are not readable by humans. It is intended as a lighter alternative to animated GIFs and APNG files for use in the web and mobile and desktop applications. Being vectorial it is independent of the device resolution. It can also include raster graphic elements. It also allows for the inclusion of interactive elements.[1]

The different player implementations have tradeoffs between CPU, GPU and memory usage.[2]

History

2015 - Hernan Torrisi released a plugin named Bodymovin[3] for the animation software Adobe After Effects that serialized animations as JSON to be rendered at runtime. It supports some but not all of the features of the internal format of After Effects.[4] Additionally, Torrisi released a renderer for the format with a JavaScript based player for modern browsers. [1] [5]

2017 - it was the work of engineers Brandon Withrow (iOS), Gabriel Peal[6] (Android), and Leland Richardson (React Native) along with lead animator Salih Abdul-Karim at AirBnB that saw the creation of the first Lottie libraries[7] to render the animations in different platforms.[8]

Other companies have provided support for more platforms.[1]

2018 - Microsoft and the .NET Foundation released a library[9] for rendering Lottie on Windows.

2019 - further support for Lottie was by Qt[10] with the release of a QML API for rendering Lottie. Later that same year, Samsung released rLottie[11] which is a platform independent C++-based renderer for Lottie, and added Lottie support in Tizen. A Python framework to work with the format was also released this year.[12]

2020 - dotLottie was created. This open-source file format combines multiple Lottie files and all their supporting resources into a single file.

2023 - Thor Vector Graphics (ThorVG) one of the vector graphics library began to support the Lottie rendering feature. [13]

2024 - The Lottie Animation Community has been established to standardize the file format.[14]

Example

This code will produce the circle shown in the image:

{
    "v": "5.7.1",
    "ip": 0,
    "op": 180,
    "nm": "Animation",
    "fr": 60,
    "w": 512,
    "h": 512,
    "layers": [
        {
            "ddd": 0,
            "ty": 4,
            "ind": 0,
            "st": 0,
            "ip": 0,
            "op": 180,
            "nm": "Layer",
            "ks": {
                "a": {
                    "a": 0,
                    "k": [
                        256,
                        256
                    ]
                },
                "p": {
                    "a": 0,
                    "k": [
                        256,
                        256
                    ]
                },
                "s": {
                    "a": 0,
                    "k": [
                        100,
                        100
                    ]
                },
                "r": {
                    "a": 0,
                    "k": 0
                },
                "o": {
                    "a": 0,
                    "k": 100
                }
            },
            "shapes": [
                {
                    "ty": "el",
                    "nm": "Ellipse",
                    "d": 1,
                    "p": {
                        "a": 0,
                        "k": [
                            256,
                            256
                        ]
                    },
                    "s": {
                        "a": 0,
                        "k": [
                            256,
                            256
                        ]
                    }
                },
                {
                    "ty": "st",
                    "nm": "Stroke",
                    "o": {
                        "a": 0,
                        "k": 100
                    },
                    "c": {
                        "a": 0,
                        "k": [
                            0.114,
                            0.157,
                            0.282
                        ]
                    },
                    "lc": 2,
                    "lj": 2,
                    "ml": 0,
                    "w": {
                        "a": 0,
                        "k": 20
                    }
                },
                {
                    "ty": "fl",
                    "nm": "Fill",
                    "o": {
                        "a": 0,
                        "k": 100
                    },
                    "c": {
                        "a": 0,
                        "k": [
                            0.196,
                            0.314,
                            0.690
                        ]
                    },
                    "r": 1
                }
            ]
        }
    ]
}

The dotLottie file format

Quick Facts Filename extension, Initial release ...

In 2020, the dotLottie file format was proposed as a standard way to pack Lottie files with other resources. The file is actually a zip file compressed with the deflate method. It includes a manifest file and preview images to ease the manipulation of the files. [4]


References

  1. [1]
    "What is a Lottie animation? - LottieFiles". lottiefiles.com. Retrieved 11 January 2022.
  2. [2]
    Biørn-Hansen, Andreas; Grønli, Tor-Morten; Ghinea, Gheorghita (5 May 2019). "Animations in Cross-Platform Mobile Applications: An Evaluation of Tools, Metrics and Performance". Sensors. 19 (9): 2081. Bibcode:2019Senso..19.2081B. doi:10.3390/s19092081. PMC 6539844. PMID 31060290.
  3. [3]
    Torrisi, Hernan (15 December 2021). "bodymovin-extension". GitHub. Retrieved 11 January 2022.
  4. [4]
    "Introducing dotLottie". dotlottie.io. Retrieved 11 January 2022.
  5. [5]
    "bodymovin-extension". December 15, 2021 – via GitHub.
  6. [6]
    Behind the Creation of Lottie, retrieved 2022-02-17
  7. [7]
    "Lottie Docs". airbnb.io. Retrieved 2021-12-14.
  8. [8]
    "Lottie". Lottie. AirBnB. Retrieved 11 January 2022.
  9. [9]
    "Lottie-Windows". December 15, 2021 – via GitHub.
  10. [10]
    "Announcing QtLottie". www.qt.io.
  11. [11]
    "rlottie: A New Approach to Motion Graphics". YouTube.
  12. [12]
    "python-lottie Changelog". 24 December 2023 – via GitLab.
  13. [13]
    "thorvg 0.10.0 release note" – via Github.
  14. [14]
    "Lottie as a standard with Lottie Animation Community (LAC) format specification body".


Stub icon

This animation-related article is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it.
Share this article:

This article uses material from the Wikipedia article DotLottie, and is written by contributors. Text is available under a CC BY-SA 4.0 International License; additional terms may apply. Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.