Lottie4J brings LottieFiles animation support to Java and JavaFX. These posts follow its development, from early experiments and rendering challenges to release milestones and practical usage examples.
When I released Lottie4J 1.1.0, I mentioned something a bit embarrassing in the release notes and this blog post: there was a new unit test to compare the JavaFX player output against a JavaScript reference player, but it “can not run on CI, because it requires a display output.” A TODO. A known limitation. One of those notes you write hoping future-you will figure it out.
Version 1.2.0 of Lottie4J is out, and it’s again a big release! The headline feature is support for the .lottie container format, but that’s just the start. This release also brings marker-based playback, cropping, adaptive rendering, significant performance improvements, and a lot of core model fixes driven by testing more complex real-world animations.
Just one week after the first public release of Lottie4J, the open-source Java library for rendering Lottie animations in JavaFX, version 1.1.0 is already out. And it’s a big one!
I’m proud to present a new JavaFX library: Lottie4J, that brings Lottie animations to JavaFX applications. I first learned about Lottie many years ago when we were developing a mobile app. We used Lottie animations to explain to users how to operate a physical device. The animations made the instructions so much clearer than static images or text alone.
Writing has always been my passion, and even in my previous jobs as a developer, I stood out as the one who enjoyed creating and maintaining documentation. But June 9th, 2023, marked my first birthday as a full-time technical writer at Azul. Yes, it’s already a year ago that I changed from being a developer-who-also-writes to a writer-who-also-develops. Let’s take a moment to reflect on my incredible journey over the past year.