Lottie animations in .NET MAUI

Introduction

Supercharge your .NET MAUI projects with Lottie animations! Imagine it as the magic wand for your app's visuals. Thanks to Adobe After Effects, Lottie speaks a special language called JSON, making animations a breeze. Meet SkiaSharp, a Microsoft buddy that helps Lottie shine in .NET MAUI, making your app look cool without the complexity. Learn the ropes in our beginner-friendly guide! Add a dash of Lottie, sprinkle in some JSON magic, and watch your app come to life!

Top advantages of Lottie Animations

• Vector-based Adaptability: Lottie animations, being vector-based, ensure seamless scalability without compromising resolution.
• Reduced File Size: Compared to formats like GIF or MP4, Lottie files boast significantly smaller sizes while maintaining top-notch quality.

Project Setup

• Launch Visual Studio 2022, and in the start window click Create a new project to create a new project.
  
• In the Create a new project window, select MAUI in the All project types drop-down, select the .NET MAUI App template, and click the Next button:
• In the configure your new project window, name your project, choose a suitable location for it, and click the Next button:
• In the Additional information window, click the Create button:
• Once the project is created, we can able to see the Android, iOS, Windows and other running options in the toolbar. Press the emulator or run button to build and run the app

Install Plugin

• Library Requirement: SkiaSharp library is essential for displaying Lottie animations.
• Installation via NuGet: Obtain the SkiaSharp library by searching for "SkiaSharp.Extended.UI.Maui" in the NuGet Package Manager.
• Enable Prerelease: Ensure the "Include prerelease" flag is enabled during installation, as MAUI support is currently in prerelease.
• User Interface Guidance: Open the NuGet Package Manager interface to facilitate the installation process.
• Visual Confirmation: The library, once searched, should appear as "SkiaSharp.Extended.UI.Maui" in the NuGet interface.

Implementation

<skia:SKLottieView RepeatCount="-1"
                           RepeatMode="Reverse"
                           Source="walking_batman.json" 
                           HeightRequest="400"
                           WidthRequest="400" />

This code essentially integrates a Lottie animation (from the "walking_batman.json" file) into your Xamarin.Forms application, configuring its repeat behavior and dimensions. Adjust these attributes based on your specific animation and layout requirements.

• First, we need to open "MauiProgram.cs" and include the following namespace and line to allow the app to use the Lottie Animations.

  using SkiaSharp.Views.Maui.Controls.Hosting;

  .UseSkiaSharp()

• Open MainPage.xaml file and add the following namespace. (the page will be replaced according to you)

  xmlns:skia="clr-namespace:SkiaSharp.Extended.UI.Controls;assembly=SkiaSharp.Extended.UI"

• Unlocking the magic of Lottie animations in your .NET MAUI app is a breeze! If you have JSON files, just add them to the Resources\Raw subfolder. For web-hosted animations, effortlessly consume them by passing the URI to the Lottie view. Explore the treasure trove of free and paid animations on Lottiefiles.com, a popular source for dynamic visuals. In our example, we'll use a JSON animation from the Lottie library repository, already included in the code for your convenience. Feel free to switch it up with your preferred animation!
• We need to add the animation to the Raw folder: Go to Resources ➡ Raw ➡ Right click add ➡ Existing files ➡ animation.json (walking_batman.json in my sample).
• <skia:SKLottieView>: This is the declaration of the SKLottieView, a specialized view for rendering Lottie animations using the SkiaSharp library.
• RepeatCount="-1": The RepeatCount attribute determines how many times the animation should repeat. A value of -1 means it will repeat indefinitely.
• RepeatMode="Reverse": The RepeatMode attribute sets the behavior of the animation when it repeats. In this case, "Reverse" means the animation will play in reverse each time it repeats.
• Source="walking_batman.json": Specifies the source of the Lottie animation. In this example, the animation is loaded from a file named "Girl.json" located in the project.
• HeightRequest="400" and WidthRequest="400": These attributes set the desired height and width of the SKLottieView, in this case, both set to 400. This property is very important to visualize Lottie animation.

Demo

Download Code

You can download the code from GitHub. If you have any doubts, feel free to post a comment. If you liked this article, and it is useful to you, do like, share the article & star the repository on GitHub.