aframe-animation-component

An animation component for A-Frame using anime.js.

Also check out the animation-timeline component for defining and orchestrating timelines of animations.

animation

Latest version requires A-Frame v0.8.0.

API

Properties

Property	Description	Default Value	Values
property	Property to animate. Can be a component name, a dot-delimited property of a component (e.g., `material.color`), or a plain attribute.
isRawProperty	Flag to animate an arbitrary object property outside of A-Frame components for better performance. If set to true, for example, we can set `property` to like `components.material.material.opacity`. If `property` starts with `components` or `object3D`, this will be inferred to `true`.	false
from	Initial value at start of animation. If not specified, the current property value of the entity will be used (will be sampled on each animation start). It is best to specify a `from` value when possible for stability.	null
to	Target value at end of animation.	null
type	Right now only supports `color` for tweening `isRawProperty` color XYZ/RGB vector values.	''
delay	How long (milliseconds) to wait before starting.	0
dir	Which dir to go from `from` to `to`.	normal	alternate, reverse
dur	How long (milliseconds) each cycle of the animation is.	1000
easing	Easing function of animation. To ease in, ease out, ease in and out.	easeInQuad	See easings
elasticity	How much to bounce (higher is stronger).	400
loop	How many times the animation should repeat. If the value is `true`, the animation will repeat infinitely.	0
round	Whether to round values.	false
startEvents	Comma-separated list of events to listen to trigger play/restart. Animation will not autoplay if specified.	null
pauseEvents	Comma-separated list of events to listen to trigger pause. Can be resumed with `resumeEvents`.	null
resumeEvents	Comma-separated list of events to listen to trigger resume after pausing.	null
autoplay	Whether or not the animation should `autoplay`. Should be specified if the animation is defined for the `animation-timeline` component.	null
enabled	Toggle startEvents effect.	true

Multiple Animations

Base name is animation. We can attach multiple animations to one entity by name-spacing the component with double underscores (__):

<a-entity animation="property: rotation"
          animation__2="property: position"
          animation__color="property: material.color"></a-entity>

Easings

easeIn	easeOut	easeInOut
easeInQuad	easeOutQuad	easeInOutQuad
easeInCubic	easeOutCubic	easeInOutCubic
easeInQuart	easeOutQuart	easeInOutQuart
easeInQuint	easeOutQuint	easeInOutQuint
easeInSine	easeOutSine	easeInOutSine
easeInExpo	easeOutExpo	easeInOutExpo
easeInCirc	easeOutCirc	easeInOutCirc
easeInBack	easeOutBack	easeInOutBack
easeInElastic	easeOutElastic	easeInOutElastic

Events

Property	Description
animationbegin	Animation began. Event detail contains `name` of animation.
animationcomplete	Animation completed. Event detail contains `name` of animation.

Members

Member	Description
animation	anime.js object.

Using anime.js Directly

anime is a popular and powerful animation engine. The component prefers to do just basic tweening and touches only the surface of what anime can do (e.g., timelines, motion paths, progress, seeking). If we need more animation features, create a separate component that uses anime.js directly. anime is accessible via AFRAME.anime.

Read through and explore the anime.js documentation and website.

Installation

Browser

Install and use by directly including the browser files:

<head>
  <title>My A-Frame Scene</title>
  <script src="https://aframe.io/releases/0.8.0/aframe.min.js"></script> 
  <script src="https://unpkg.com/aframe-animation-component@^4.1.2/dist/aframe-animation-component.min.js"></script> 
</head>
 
<body>
  <a-scene>
    <a-entity geometry="primitive: box" material="color: black"
              animation__color="property: material.color; dir: alternate; dur: 1000;
                                easing: easeInSine; loop: true; to: #FFF">
    </a-entity>
 
    <a-entity geometry="primitive: box" material="color: orange"
              animation__fadein="property: material.opacity; dur: 100;
                                  easing: linear; from 0; to: 1; startEvents: fadein"
              animation__fadeout="property: material.opacity; dur: 100;
                                  easing: linear; from 1; to: 0; startEvents: fadeout"
    </a-entity>
 
    <a-cylinder color="#F55" radius="0.1"
                animation="property: color; dir: alternate; dur: 1000;
                           easing: easeInSine; loop: true; to: #5F5"
                animation__scale="property: scale; dir: alternate; dur: 200;
                           easing: easeInSine; loop: true; to: 1.2 1 1.2"
                animation__yoyo="property: position; dir: alternate; dur: 1000;
                                 easing: easeInSine; loop: true; to: 0 2 0">
    </a-cylinder>
 
  </a-scene>
</body>

npm

Install via npm:

npm install aframe-animation-component

Then register and use.

require('aframe');
require('aframe-animation-component');

Versus `<a-animation>`

I expect to deprecate <a-animation> in favor for this component.

Imperative Ergonomics: Imperatively set animations and all of its properties with a single setAttribute call. With <a-animation>, we must do createElement, multiple setAttributes, appendChild, and addEventListener('loaded').
Performance: The animation component takes advantage of shortcut updates of positions, rotations, and scales. In later versions of A-Frame, A-Frame allows us to performantly modify these transformation properties without going through the whole .setAtttribute flow.
Synchronous: Setting a component is synchronous, meaning it takes effect immediately. With <a-animation>, we must wait for it to append to the DOM and register a callback listener.
Consistency with the Framework: The animation component fits into A-Frame's entity-component-system framework. The <a-animation> tag is the only outlier in which we must use a DOM element to modify an entity.
Simpler API: The animation component uses anime.js, a popular and simple JavaScript animation library. <a-animation>'s API is loosely based off of Web Animations draft specification which is overly complex.
Easier Maintenance: The animation component uses A-Frame's component API as well as anime.js. <a-animation> uses the Custom Element polyfill directly with tween.js. anime.js's features makes the animation codebase much slimmer (140 vs 550 lines of code).
Features: The animation component has the features of the newly popular anime.js library (e.g., color interpolation).
Faster Development: Being detached from the A-Frame core library means faster iteration of features. Due to being easier to maintain, having more features, and not being tied to A-Frame versions, we can add things quickly such as timeline support.
anime.js: anime.js has great performance over Tween.js and tons of great animation features.
Less Bugs: <a-animation> has not been touched in ages. This component has lesss issues filed against it, and people usually end up switching to the component once they run into issues with <a-animation>.

aframe-animation-component