/Flare-JS

Flare Javascript ES6 runtime with Canvas rendering.

Primary LanguageJavaScriptMIT LicenseMIT

Flare-JS

Javascript ES6 runtime with Canvas rendering.

CanvasKit vs Canvas

There are currently two branches: master with CanvasKit rendering (Skia via WebAssembly) and context2d with the standard CanvasRenderingContext2D. The context2d branch is deprecated.

NPM Installation

You can use Flare-JS directly from npm:

npm install @2dimensions/flare-js

CanvasKit is currently bundled with this package.

Building

Use NPM to get the dependencies and then build with webpack:

npm install
npm start -- --watch

Flare-JS Example

There are a few steps to start rendering a Flare file:

  1. Create a canvas element in HTML
  2. Instantiate and initialize the Graphics object with the canvas reference
  3. Start the render loop with window.requestAnimationFrame()
  4. Load the an Actor from file with Flare.ActorLoader.load(fileLocation, callback)
  5. Initialize and instantiate the Actor - that will initialize the ActorArtboards for the loaded Flare file:
    • First Actor.initialize()
    • then actor.makeInstance()
  6. Create a new AnimationInstance(actor, animation)
  7. Advance the AnimationInstance within the window.requestAnimationFrame callback:
    • increase its time value with the provided setter animationInstance.time
    • then apply it with animationInstance.apply()
  8. Advance the actor: actor.advance(elapsed)

Running the Example

The example folder contains two files, example.html and example.js, with an example implementation on how to use this runtime.

Use NPM to get the gl-matrix dependency:

npm install gl-matrix

After the installation completes, copy gl-matrix.js from node_modules/gl-matrix-dist into the repo's /build folder. (N.B. canvaskit is downloaded with this repo, and already present in the /build folder.)

At this point run a webpack build:

npm run dev

Use a local web server such as NGINX or MAMP to expose the resources.

example.html

This file contains the canvas element that we need to render the Flare file. It'll also load the necessary dependencies (i.e. Flare-JS, gl-matrix, canvaskit) and the example running script example.js.

The <script> tag will have implement the onLoad() callback for the body HTML Element: a FlareExample object is initialized with the canvas reference, and passed a callback function that'll load the Flare file from disk - flareExample.load(filename, callback).

example.js

This js file creates a FlareExample object. Its constructor initialized the Graphics object, starts the rendering loop and calls-back to the script.

The callback, in the HTML file will call FlareExample.load(filename) to load the file from disk. Once Flare.ActorLoader is done, its load callback will finish setting up the actor within the Example via FlareExample.setActor().

FlareExample.setActor will perform the initialization and instantiation of the Artboards, and the Animation.

The render loop - that is FlareExample.advance() can now advance the Actor, the Animation and lastly draw to canvas via FlareExample.Draw().

Contributing

  1. Fork it!
  2. Create your feature branch: git checkout -b my-new-feature
  3. Commit your changes: git commit -am 'Add some feature'
  4. Push to the branch: git push origin my-new-feature
  5. Submit a pull request.

License

See the LICENSE file for license rights and limitations (MIT).