Yo, can the Lottie devs ask their amazing AI bullshit to fix alpha mattes / expressions / text / etc

Lottie in Web
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Seriously. Lottie used to be a valuable tool, I even onboarded it where I work, etc - but lately trying to do any meaningful / more complex animations for web while using Lottie is a truly
depressing experience.

The AE Lottiefiles plugin is shit. With each update the UX gets worse and performance shittier - here are some random examples.

Why can’t I resize/zoom in the rendered animation preview window? Sometimes it would be really really useful to see the details and make sure everything looks right - because it never is. You can bet your ass some stroke somewhere is fucked or some element is cut off. On to my next point.

The bug report after rendering is a nice idea if it were actually fucking useful. Ok, cool, there’s some path issue, alignment?, effect? NP bro, let me quickly comb through 100s of layers and maybe guess that I’m working on the right one and hopefully not fuck anything else up while doing that. Just fucking tell the user on which layer the issue is.
I swear 80% of time is spent on troubleshooting or finding workarounds for this plugin.

Let the user preview the animation on their browser locally without having to upload to the website. I mean how convoluted can you make this process. Also, pretty funny capping the upload limit to 10 files. Surely the investors are giddy when they see new signups, right?

What’s next, tokens/coins per frame rendered? I perfectly understand that the company is desperate for some revenue, since noone wants to pay for this shit, but can you try and be a bit more subtle with it?

Why does Lottie still can’t handle ‘modern’ mattes? It’s super fun to navigate 48 different mattes to figure out which one is fucking up. Surely the size and performance of the while doesn’t take a hit at all. I might as well render a gif and be done with it. Streamlining web animations my fucking ass, Lottie :+1:

PS! Your social media animation quality is shit. Every time I see a post on LinkedIn or wherever I feel embarrassed for ya’ll. You’re supposed to be innovative animation-tech thing, but the quality of animation you actually can produce is atrocious. Who approves the content that this company puts out? Have they seen a decent piece of motion graphics?

TLDR: Just fucking fix and add the very basic of functionality for the AE plugin.

Stop creating all this superfluous bullshit - Lottie Creator? Maybe you need to hear this outside of the c-level zoom jerkoff session, but no self respecting motion designer is going to use that for serious work.

Until then, Rive looks nice.

1 Like
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:wave: Hey @trial,

Haris here from the LottieFiles product team. Thanks for taking the time to share your feedback. We genuinely appreciate candid input like this, even when it’s tough to hear.

We understand your frustration with the recent updates to the AE plugin. The switch to the new rendering engine in v4.x introduced some regressions, and while it’s aimed at enabling better support for modern mattes and future improvements, we recognize that some core functionalities have been impacted.

To address your key points:

  • Zooming/resizing in preview: We hear you. A more flexible previewing experience is something we’ll look into improving.
  • Bug reporting: More granular layer-level reporting would be a huge improvement, and we’ll discuss ways to make troubleshooting less painful.
  • Local preview without uploading: This is a fair ask, and we’ll revisit ways to make previewing more seamless.
  • File upload limits & monetization concerns: We understand your concerns, and while we do need to sustain the platform, we’re actively exploring how to balance free access with premium features without hampering usability.
  • Modern matte support: We know this has been a longstanding request, and it remains a priority as we continue improving Lottie’s capabilities.

Your feedback, however blunt, is valid, and we’ll take it into account as we refine the plugin. We want Lottie to be a tool that animators trust and love, and that means addressing pain points like these.

If you’re open to it, we’d love to hear more about your specific workflow challenges so we can make meaningful improvements. Feel free to reach out directly.

Thanks again for your honest thoughts.

— Haris & the LottieFiles Team