How can I author or create Lottie animations on Linux?

Question

I use a Linux machine as my daily driver for web development, and I would like to create Lottie animations.

I need to draw my shapes and use timeline / keyframing / tween tools. It can be using a full-fledged tool for the purpose, or by exporting from another graphics program such as Inkscape.

I have done some research on the topic, and found out that most suggested workflows either require an Apple machine or the use of Adobe After Effects.

Buying a Mac is out of the question for that purpose. Investing into paid software is OK, preferably with a perpetual license i.e. the software remains functional even if I do not renew.

Preferably, I would like to be able to achieve the entire workflow on Linux. I also have access to a Windows environment; this can be acceptable as a second solution, though a little inconvenient as it would require me to stop everything else in order to restart my computer, author the files, export, then do the whole thing in reverse.

Services such as LottieFiles do not fit the requirements, for instance, as they only apply preset animations to stationary imported shapes.

Would you have some suggestions of tools or workflows to achieve this?

Answer 1

Try out LottieLabs. They have a web based editor, so I assume it will work for Linux devices.

Alternatively, use Rive which has a similar format but (from what I can tell) generally has a smaller file size and has some additional capabilities that are harder to do in Lottie.

Answer 2

I’m also interested in this feature, from what I saw there is glaxnimate (open source software that is used for instance inside kdenlive) that can deal with lottie files (it might not support all features yet).

Otherwise, figma can produce animations and export them to lottie file, but Figma is not open source (but it is free and browser based, so available on linux).