The Flutter Live conference was yesterday, a conference all about Google's Flutter UI toolkit for Android and iOS (and soon for desktop and web) using Google's Dart programming language. One of the announcements made there was a new vector animation tool called Flare.
Flare allows you to create animations from vector graphics files (SVGs) and use them in Flutter apps on mobile devices or on the web. The animations are rendered using hardware accelerated WebGL, so run smooth even on low end devices.
The animations can be used as is, so designers don't have to learn how to program and programmers don't have to learn how to design to embed the animations in a product, this was the main goal of Flare, to enable designers to work directly on the asset as it appears in the final product without having to learn a complicated process or tools.
Best of all, Flare is part of the Open Design movement and can be used for free, it is a tool that runs as a website right in your web browser, so you can use it from any operating system.
Flare is the second animation app from 2dimensions, their first app is called Nima and is the same as Flare but for animating raster graphics instead of vector graphics and allows exporting for use in tools such as Unity. A full list of runtimes for exporting your work can be found here.
To use both Flare and Nima, you just need to create a free account on 2dimensions.com or login with your Twitter, Facbook or Google account.
When you use Flare and Nima for free, all animations you create are public so other people can view them on 2dimsion's explore site and learn from them. You still retain all rights to your work, unless you license it under a creative commons license, which also enables you to make your animations "forkable", so other people can edit and remix your work if you so choose.
If you don't want to make your animations public, you need to pay either $21 per month or $14 per month if you pay yearly.
If you're interested in other announcements from the Flutter Live conference, Google has uploaded a short 11 minute recap here:
You can also watch the full 4 hour livestream here:
Recordings of all sessions are available in this playlist.