Framer vs Lottie vs Material

Overview

Framer

Stacks365

Followers502

Votes32

GitHub Stars5.9K

Forks477

Material

Stacks96

Followers88

Votes3

GitHub Stars12.0K

Forks1.3K

Lottie

Stacks454

Followers338

Votes6

GitHub Stars35.5K

Forks5.4K

Framer vs Lottie vs Material: What are the differences?

# Key Differences between Framer, Lottie, and Material

Framer, Lottie, and Material are three popular tools used in the field of design and development. They each serve different purposes and offer unique features. Here are the key differences between Framer, Lottie, and Material:

1. **Animation Capabilities**: Framer is primarily used for creating interactive prototypes with advanced animation features, while Lottie is specifically designed for bringing animations created in Adobe After Effects to life in mobile apps. Material, on the other hand, provides a design system and guidelines for creating consistent user interfaces.

2. **Platform Compatibility**: Framer is a tool that works well for both web and mobile app designs, offering versatility in creating prototypes for various platforms. Lottie, on the other hand, focuses on exporting animations for mobile platforms, particularly iOS and Android. Material, being a design system, provides guidelines that are platform-agnostic but are mainly associated with Google's Material Design principles.

3. **Workflow Integration**: Framer allows designers and developers to collaborate seamlessly within a single platform, offering a smooth workflow from design to development. Lottie, with its integration with Adobe After Effects, streamlines the process of animating designs and exporting them for mobile applications. Material, as a design system, offers a framework that can be integrated into various design and development tools for consistent UI design.

4. **Plugin Ecosystem**: Framer has a robust plugin ecosystem that extends its functionality and allows users to customize their design and prototyping experiences. Lottie, while not having a similar plugin ecosystem, provides a set of tools and libraries that facilitate the integration of animations into mobile apps. Material, as a design system, offers a set of components and resources that support the implementation of Material Design principles.

5. **Learning Curve**: Framer, with its advanced animation capabilities and prototyping features, may have a steeper learning curve compared to Lottie and Material, which focus on specific aspects of design and development. Lottie, being more specialized in animation exports, may require a certain level of proficiency in Adobe After Effects. Material, with its guidelines and best practices, provides a more accessible entry point for designers and developers looking to create user interfaces following Material Design principles.

6. **Community Support**: Framer has a vibrant community of designers and developers who share resources, tutorials, and plugins to support users in creating interactive prototypes. Lottie, with its integration with Adobe After Effects, benefits from the existing community around the software and the support for exporting animations to mobile apps. Material, being part of Google's ecosystem, has a large community of designers and developers who contribute to the adoption and evolution of Material Design in various applications.

In Summary, Framer, Lottie, and Material each offer unique features and benefits for designers and developers, with Framer focusing on interactive prototypes and advanced animations, Lottie on exporting animations from Adobe After Effects to mobile apps, and Material on providing a design system for creating consistent user interfaces.

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Advice on Framer, Material, Lottie

Joey

Design & Growth Engineer at Joey van Gessel Design

Feb 12, 2021

Needs advice

Hey!

I want to prototype an app for a school project. I need to test the app from a distance, so it's multiple user tests from different locations when I'm only there online. What do you think is the best combination of tools available? I want to record the user sessions. It should be responsive on different viewports for phones, and it's should be interactive (e.g., testers can actually type in a text box).

Thanks in advance for your advice, looking forward to it. Please also tell me the "why" behind the choice.

Joey

6.67k views6.67k

Comments

Detailed Comparison

Framer	Material	Lottie
Framer is a JavaScript framework that makes creating realistic prototypes a breeze – complete with filters, spring physics and full 3D effects. Framer Generator is a desktop app that imports the resources and folder hierarchy from Photoshop files (Sketch coming soon). Import your design and immediately start to add interaction and animation.	Express your creativity with Material, an animation and graphics framework for Google's Material Design and Apple's Flat UI in Swift.	Lottie is a mobile library for Android and iOS that parses Adobe After Effects animations exported as json with Bodymovin and renders them natively on mobile!
Generate assets out of Photoshop to set up new projects.;Animate any layer in 3D space with spring physics and bezier curves.;Hardware accelerated for high frame rates, based on CSS transforms.;Works on desktop, mobile and tablets. Plays well with WebKit.	Fully Configurable UI Components;Grid System For Complex UIs;Layout Library To Simplify AutoLayout;Base Material Layers & Material Views To Create New UI Components;Side Navigation View Controller;Navigation Bar View & Controller;Search Bar View;Material Buttons;Material Switch;Material Card Views;Menu Toolset To Create Animated Menus;Camera / Video Extension With Extensive Functionality;Animation Extension To Create Intricate Animations;Complete Material Color Library;Example Projects	-
Statistics
GitHub Stars 5.9K	GitHub Stars 12.0K	GitHub Stars 35.5K
GitHub Forks 477	GitHub Forks 1.3K	GitHub Forks 5.4K
Stacks 365	Stacks 96	Stacks 454
Followers 502	Followers 88	Followers 338
Votes 32	Votes 3	Votes 6
Pros & Cons
Pros 18 Great for prototyping 6 Free 5 Fast idea validation 3 Integrates right with Photoshop	Pros 1 IOS benefits 1 Samples included 1 Good Documentation	Pros 3 Is free 2 Multi platform 1 Open source
Integrations
Figma Android OS macOS Sketch iOS	Objective-C Swift	Android SDK Cocoa Touch (iOS) React Native

What are some alternatives to Framer, Material, Lottie?

ProtoPie

It is the easiest tool used to turn your UI/UX design ideas into highly interactive prototypes for mobile, desktop, web, all the way to IoT. ProtoPie runs on macOS & Windows and the player app is on iOS and Android.

Origami

Origami is a free toolkit for Quartz Composer—created by the Facebook Design team—that makes interactive design prototyping easy and doesn’t require programming.

Supernova

Supernova converts any mobile design to full-fledged native applications, giving the developers extra time to do actual coding. No need to export resources, write navigation, connect it to components created by hand, read styles, apply styles, copy-paste information..

Principle

It makes it easy to design animated and interactive user interfaces. Whether you're designing the flow of a multi-screen app, or new interactions and animations, it helps you create designs that look and feel amazing.

Fuse

It is a set of user experience development tools that unify design, prototyping and implementation of high quality, native apps for iOS and Android.

Flinto

It is a Mac app used by designers around the world to create interactive and animated prototypes of their app designs. It lets designers quickly make interactive prototypes of their mobile, desktop, or web apps.

Fiber

Fiber UI Kit is the perfect starting place for your next project. Each element has been designed to work independently or as one seamless flow. It’s a full-fledged prototype with customizable components.

Pop

Pop is an extensible animation engine for iOS and OS X. In addition to basic static animations, it supports spring and decay dynamic animations, making it useful for building realistic, physics-based interactions. The API allows quick integration with existing Objective-C codebases and enables the animation of any property on any object. It's a mature and well-tested framework that drives all the animations and transitions in Paper.

Avocado

Avocado is an open source interaction design toolbox built by IDEO. It enables designers to make quick interactive prototypes without writing a line of code. Built on top of Facebook's Origami framework, Avocado provides ready-to-use patches that can be easily combined to create fully-customized prototypes. Official announcement: http://labs.ideo.com/2014/05/27/avocado/

Penpot

It is an open-source design and prototyping platform meant for cross-domain teams. Non-dependent on operating systems, it is web-based and works with open web standards (SVG). For all and empowered by the community.

Related Comparisons

Framer vs Lottie vs Material: What are the differences?

# Key Differences between Framer, Lottie, and Material

Framer, Lottie, and Material are three popular tools used in the field of design and development. They each serve different purposes and offer unique features. Here are the key differences between Framer, Lottie, and Material:

1. **Animation Capabilities**: Framer is primarily used for creating interactive prototypes with advanced animation features, while Lottie is specifically designed for bringing animations created in Adobe After Effects to life in mobile apps. Material, on the other hand, provides a design system and guidelines for creating consistent user interfaces.

2. **Platform Compatibility**: Framer is a tool that works well for both web and mobile app designs, offering versatility in creating prototypes for various platforms. Lottie, on the other hand, focuses on exporting animations for mobile platforms, particularly iOS and Android. Material, being a design system, provides guidelines that are platform-agnostic but are mainly associated with Google's Material Design principles.

3. **Workflow Integration**: Framer allows designers and developers to collaborate seamlessly within a single platform, offering a smooth workflow from design to development. Lottie, with its integration with Adobe After Effects, streamlines the process of animating designs and exporting them for mobile applications. Material, as a design system, offers a framework that can be integrated into various design and development tools for consistent UI design.

4. **Plugin Ecosystem**: Framer has a robust plugin ecosystem that extends its functionality and allows users to customize their design and prototyping experiences. Lottie, while not having a similar plugin ecosystem, provides a set of tools and libraries that facilitate the integration of animations into mobile apps. Material, as a design system, offers a set of components and resources that support the implementation of Material Design principles.

5. **Learning Curve**: Framer, with its advanced animation capabilities and prototyping features, may have a steeper learning curve compared to Lottie and Material, which focus on specific aspects of design and development. Lottie, being more specialized in animation exports, may require a certain level of proficiency in Adobe After Effects. Material, with its guidelines and best practices, provides a more accessible entry point for designers and developers looking to create user interfaces following Material Design principles.

6. **Community Support**: Framer has a vibrant community of designers and developers who share resources, tutorials, and plugins to support users in creating interactive prototypes. Lottie, with its integration with Adobe After Effects, benefits from the existing community around the software and the support for exporting animations to mobile apps. Material, being part of Google's ecosystem, has a large community of designers and developers who contribute to the adoption and evolution of Material Design in various applications.

In Summary, Framer, Lottie, and Material each offer unique features and benefits for designers and developers, with Framer focusing on interactive prototypes and advanced animations, Lottie on exporting animations from Adobe After Effects to mobile apps, and Material on providing a design system for creating consistent user interfaces.

Framer vs Lottie vs Material

Overview