Rive Animation That Reacts
to Every Tap, Hover & State

Rive animation is interactive vector animation built in the Rive editor and saved as a .riv file that a free, open-source runtime renders live inside an app or website. Alongside the artwork and timelines, the file holds a state machine — the rules for which animation plays and when. Your code drives it by setting simple inputs, so the animation reacts to taps, hovers, and app state instead of playing a fixed clip.

A Rive state machine is the logic inside a .riv file that decides which animation plays, when it switches, and how it blends from one state to the next. For an animated button, the states might be idle, hover, pressed, and disabled, with transitions triggered by inputs or pointer events. Because the logic lives in the file, developers don't write code to sequence clips, and transitions stay smooth even when a user interrupts them halfway.

The main difference is that Rive animations can react to user input on their own through a built-in state machine, while Lottie animations play a fixed timeline that your code starts, stops, or seeks. Lottie is exported from After Effects and suits anything that plays start to finish, such as loaders, logos, and icons. Rive is built in its own editor and suits buttons, toggles, navigation, characters, and anything with multiple states.

Yes, a Rive .riv file is usually smaller than the equivalent Lottie JSON because it is a compact binary format, with most interface assets between 1KB and 200KB. One .riv file can also replace several separate Lottie clips, since every state lives in the same file. The trade-off is the Rive runtime, a one-time download that is worth it when you have several interactive assets but is overkill for a single looping animation.

Developers control a Rive animation by setting named inputs on its state machine — booleans (is the menu open), numbers (download progress), and triggers (play the success burst). A Rive file can also listen for pointer events on its own and fire events back to your code, for example when a user taps a hotspot. We agree the input names with your developers before the build, and the handoff note lists every input and event.

Rive has official open-source runtimes for the web (JavaScript and React), iOS, Android, Flutter, and React Native, plus support in game engines such as Unity. Rive files can also be embedded in Webflow and Framer sites. Vue, Angular, and Svelte projects use the web runtime directly. Tell us your stack at the start and we will confirm runtime support before the build begins.

No, you do not need a Rive subscription to ship Rive animations, because the runtimes that play .riv files in your app or website are open source and free. The editor subscription is only needed to create and edit files, and that is our cost as the studio. You receive the production .riv file and the editable source, so another Rive designer can pick the work up later.

A Lottie animation cannot be converted into a useful Rive file automatically, because the states and logic that make Rive worth using don't exist in a Lottie file. The asset has to be rebuilt in Rive, reusing the original vector artwork, with a state machine added on top. If the animation only ever plays start to finish, there is no reason to convert it — keep it as a Lottie.

Yes, Rive is well suited to character animation because it supports bone rigging and mesh deformation, so one rigged character can be posed and animated without redrawing it. For lip sync, mouth shapes are built as states and switched in time with a voice track, or driven live by inputs from your app. That makes Rive a strong choice for in-app guides, mascots, and AI assistant characters that need to speak or react.

Yes, Rive animations run fully offline once loaded and stay sharp on any screen size, which makes them a good fit for trade show kiosks and touchscreen displays. For KTTM at ITME 2025, we built a Rive-driven kiosk app that ran on two Raspberry Pi 4 units behind 55-inch touchscreens with no venue wifi. Share the screen size, orientation, and hardware and we build to that spec.

Custom Rive animation is priced per asset and by the number of states and inputs it needs, not by the length of the animation. A three-state toggle and a rigged, lip-synced character are very different builds even if both run for a few seconds. Send us the screens or a short brief and we reply with a fixed quote within 4 working hours.