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Glossary

Animation runtime

The library that plays an exported animation file inside an app or a game.

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In short

An animation runtime is the library inside an app, website or game that loads an exported animation file, advances it every frame, draws it and passes input and data to it, so the animation runs live instead of as a video.

In more detail

  • A runtime is what lets one file play the same on the web, phones and game engines.
  • Its API is how app code talks to the animation: start a state machine, set inputs, set data and read events.

In Ova Motion

Ova Motion has one runtime written in Rust with bindings for the web (WebAssembly), Swift, Kotlin, Flutter, Unity, Unreal and C, all licensed MIT or Apache-2.0.

Last checked against the product on 2026-10-15.

Examples you can play

All templates
Hatch: an Ova Motion templateCharacters
HatchAn egg in a nest at sunset: hover it, click to hatch it (Trim Path crack, elastic chick), click the chick to make it chirp, the sky for a new egg.
Game HUD: an Ova Motion templateInterface
Game HUDTake hits, drink potions, cast spells and finish quests: bars drop with a trail, damage floats up, a level-up bursts with light, low health pulses red.

Questions

Does a runtime make an app bigger?

A little: it is one native library or WebAssembly module, shared by every animation in the app.

Read next

Runtimes: play interactive animations on every platformOne runtime written in Rust, with bindings for each platform you build for. Every one plays the same .egg file and has the same calls for inputs, data and events.Animations your code can talk to.Load one .egg file, start its state machine and set inputs and data from your app. The open-source runtime draws it on a canvas or a native view and reports events back.Which animation format should your app use?GIF, video, Lottie, animated SVG, CSS and interactive runtime files each fit a different job. Here is how they compare on size, sharpness, interaction and who maintains them.

Start with an egg.
Ship an interface.

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